Published Pynchon photos

[David Payne]

As promised, here's our follow up: http://lawsofsilence.blogspot.com/2013/02/teacup-in-tempest.html

We found a reference to a heretofore unknown, yet publicly published, photo of Pynchon during college, mentioned in a Cornell alumni survey:

Outstanding Cornell memory: President Deane Waldo Malott was burned in effigy, and a photo of Tom Pynchon, Kirk Sale, Richard Farina and Todd Perry made the front page of the NY Daily News under the Headline “Coeds Riot for Sex.” 

We don't think we found it, but we shared some possibilities along with all of our information for anyone caring to dig around.

We also shared an annotated bibliography of sources that provides a good description and analysis of the Cornell 1958 protest.

________________________________
> On Sun, 10 Feb 2013 09:54:34 -0500, Mark Kohut (markekohut at yahoo.com) wrote:
> 
> To: All Who Worked on this: 
> 
> A very great Thanks to all for the work, the detail, the careful 
> thinking and concern and fun of presenting all this. I'll offer the 
> rationale that Pynchon knew this fun stuff was/could be public, since 
> it WAS to be semi-public and he hid himself as in his Simpsons' 
> appearance ( if it were his 'real' self in public, I suggest he would 
> not have been part--and he must have had chances to be " in public" in 
> some ways then (and later) and it is almost metaphysically different 
> from Pynchon and his righteous belief in privacy. A belief I think we 
> should support since he wants it and is entitled to it. 
> 
> Anyway, to me, that letter from Dr Ivan Cbarl (almost a Pynchonian name 
> if pronounceable) seems like it could easily be a prosaic version of 
> Pynchon's prose. [sic]. I was especially hit with his stylistic trope 
> of listing those four Presidents the way he did..".Hoover, Taft, Dewey 
> and President Eisenhower" remind me of his lawyer lists.....in the 
> works... 
> and of course his anti-Nixonness even this early. 
> 
> Thanks again. 
> 
> Sent from my iPad 
> 
> On Feb 10, 2013, at 12:03 AM, David Payne 
> <dpayne1912 at hotmail.com<mailto:dpayne1912 at hotmail.com>> wrote: 
> 
> 
> We copied the pictures into our write up: 
> http://lawsofsilence.blogspot.com/2013/02/start-of-duel-buried-in-sun_9.html 
> 
> In there, we linked to the edition of The Cornell Daily Sun that has 
> the joke article and the pictures. See pages 1 and 5: 
> http://cdsun.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/cornell?a=d&d=CDS19581024-01.2.4&e=--------20--1-----all--- 
> 
> But I hope you'll read what we wrote, too. It was a lot of work, 
> provides a lot of context, and we linked to other articles worth 
> reading. 
> 
> Even if you don't go our write up, please go here: 
> http://www.richardandmimi.com/cornell.html 
> 
> It has the pictures and lots of good info. 
> 
> ________________________________ 
> On Sat, 9 Feb 2013, David Morris 
> (fqmorris at gmail.com<mailto:fqmorris at gmail.com>) wrote: 
> 
> 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 
>