Published Pynchon photos

[David Morris]

Link to  P & F dueling pic, please.

On Saturday, February 9, 2013, David Payne wrote:

>
> Hey, so this picture, the one that supposedly has Pynchon and
> Farina dueling in a cemetery, is out in the wild, sitting there on the
> internet now. Has this been discussed here?
>
> A friend of mine stumbled across it last week. It's in a joke article of
> the Cornell Sun--October 24, 1958, one of the editions in their online
> archives.
>
> The picture does have Farina dueling. The person he's dueling isn't
> Pynchon, but Pynchon may be one of the people in the accompanying photos.
>
> I couldn't find any talk about these pictures here or anywhere else, so we
> dug into the background and wrote about it:
> http://lawsofsilence.blogspot.com/2013/02/start-of-duel-buried-in-sun_9.html
>
> As we dug into this, we learned a lot about Pynchon's college days, his
> circle of brilliant friends, the struggles within the English Department at
> the time, the riot of 1958 (started as a protest largely by Kirk Sale, one
> of Pynchon's best friends in college) ... A lot came together at once. We
> were especially impressed with the group of Cornell graduates from this
> time period, an astoundingly accomplished group of people.
>
> Maybe this is old hat for many of you, but we did have two exciting finds:
>
> 1. The characters in this joke article appeared in other articles in the
> Sun. It looks like Pynchon's friends, and possibly Pynchon, were sharing
> characters in articles they published in the Sun under pseudonyms. We laid
> out what we found, and I'm hoping others might be able to use this find
> some juvenilia by Pynchon or Farina in the Sun. There is, for example, a
> Letter to the Editor in 1960 that is ascribed to one of the fake names used
> in the dueling article. Could it have been written by Pynchon or Farina? I
> think there's more out there for people with time to poke around.
>
> 2. We found mention of another picture of Pynchon from his college days,
> one that's unknown! I think I found that picture on microfilm today. It
> might help shed a little light on Pynchon's involvement in the 1958
> protest, although it's a pretty blurry shot of a whole lot of people, so it
> may amount to nothing. More on that soon.
>
> Anyhow, I know that digging into Pynchon's past and finding photos of him
> are a turn off for many people, and I get that. Personally, I don't care so
> much about photos of Pynchon, although the mystique is pretty comedic by
> this point, but I do find this period at Cornell to be fascinating and
> would love to find stories/articles to the Editor written by Farina and/or
> Pynchon during this time.
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, 05 Aug 94, Bob Orloswky wrote:
>
> The recent posting from the UK about the Judy Collins Songbook reminded
> me that I had forgotten to post an update about that.  I forget sometimes
> what I'm talking about on private mail and what makes its way to the list.
>
> John Krafft and I have both tracked down what *seem* to be first editions
> of the Judy Collins Songbook and there is no Pynchon photo in either copy.
>  However, there are several photos of Collins with Farina and some
> tearful text from Collins about Farina's funeral, which leads me to believe
> that there may actually be an edition out there which does contain the
> rumored photo.  Either that or the rumor was an extremely erudite practical
> joke with the most limited possible audience -- us. If anyone out there
> stumbles across another copy of the Songbook, please take a look.
>
> Regarding other published Pynchon photos, Baxter Hathaway in a 1978
> article in the Cornell Daily Sun refers to a photo of Pynchon and Farina in
> period costume, duelling in a cemetery, that was published in a joke
> edition of the Sun in the spring of 1959.  Anybody have a copy of this?
>
> And to throw in my two cents, I always thought of Lot 49 as
> Pynchon's Vonnegut novel -- not a compliment.  I'm infinitely more
> enraptured by V. and GR.
>
> Regarding Slow Learner, Pynchon reportedly put it out because he was sick
> of all the pirate editions of those stories, not because he was enamored of
> the stories themselves.
>
> Bob Orlowsky
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