A Q&A with Jim Knipfel

[Dave Monroe]

Who do you read these days?

In terms of reading, everything is on audio for me now. Right now I’m
listening to an audio version of Gravity’s Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon.
That sounds all hoity-toity… But it’s such a glorious book. I had
forgotten how astonishing it is. Other things I have read recently
that I really liked: I listened to two very, very different works by
Nick Baker: Human Smoke, which is his WWII book, and then The
Anthologist, a novel, which is really good. There are still so many
things that are not available on audio. It’s hard to find James
Thurber. There is some Beckett — not all the Beckett I would like.
Henry Miller is hard, and the recordings that are out there are
miserable. These things are so damned expensive, too. Most of the
writers I really love can’t be found on audio. You aren’t going to
find Céline on audio… You can find him in French, but it’s
unbelievably expensive, and I don’t know French. Gravity’s Rainbow is
taking me a very long time — I have it on 55 discs.

Thomas Pynchon has been lauding your work since Slackjaw the book
first came out. How did the Knipfel-Pynchon connection begin?

When a book nearing the final stages of production, you sit down with
your editor and make up a wish list of people you want to get blurbs
from. We sent out 20 or 25 copies of Slackjaw to various people. We
didn’t hear a peep. Not a whisper, from any of them. So we had one
left. And my editor at the time called and said, “We have one left.
Who should we send it to?” And I said, why don’t you send one to
Pynchon. And he said, “Well, it’s throwing one away. Nothing’s gonna
happen.” And I said, “Then throw one away and mail it to him anyway.
We aren’t getting anything else from anybody.” We mailed it to his
agent, and we pretty much forgot about it. The day before
Thanksgiving, 1997, I was at the Press. My editor called me, and he
could barely speak. I’m trying to find out what the deal is, and all
he could say was, “We just got a fax. I’m going to send it over to
you.” And he faxed it over. And then I couldn’t speak for days after
that. The blurb that Pynchon wrote was astonishing. And then he did
another one for me for The Buzzing. He’s been extraordinarily kind for
reasons I cannot fathom. I don’t get it, but I’m deeply, deeply
grateful.

http://archive.mensjournal.com/jimknipfel