On Pyn's Privacy

[Mark Kohut]

This was accepted for publication once, then it wasn't. I may be wrong in all things, of course, but here
more likely wrong about the secretive Swedish Academy than Pynchon, I think. But I would; I wrote it. 
 
One could add, or write a separate piece, on his vision of human community and attendant meanings of
privacy.

I've shared an item with you.
 On Why Pynchon Will Never Win the Nobel  
Snapshot of the item below:
  
On Why Pynchon Will Never Win the Nobel
Ladbrooke’s, the famous odds-maker of almost everything, has just declared Thomas Pynchon the American writer with the best odds to win the Nobel Prize for Literature this year, rumored to
ba announced next Thursday, October 6. 10 to 1. 
Don’t take them. You will lose. No matter how much you may believe he deserves it. 
Why?. As those who have followed and talked within publishing circles about the Nobel Committee agree, the awarding of the Nobel is very important for the prestige of the Nobel. And one thing the Swedish Academy wants is a winner who will come to Oslo, accept the award and give a speech about the importance of literature that may resound as Faulkner’s, say, has. One worth any number of lesser speeches--and writers.  Ever since Jean-Paul  Sartre refused the Prize, we hear,--writers can be so anti-establishment!--we can sum up their concern with  a spin on Groucho’s famous line: The Swedish Academy will never invite into their Club someone who will not join. 
And Pynchon will not. Ever. Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is--and has always been--the most reclusive major American writer of them all.  No pictures exist beyond a high school and a Navy one. His Cornell University permanent record file is....missing.  Salinger hated all publicity and it led him to New Hampshire after his success; Pynchon believes in privacy deeper than any anti-publicity predilictions. It is part of his coherent, comprehensive vision of human beings in the modern world different than in Salinger. 
“Don’t follow leaders; watch the parking meters” sings Pynchon contemporary Bob Dylan.  That line can bring Max Weber, the great sociologist, to mind, quoted in and very influential for Gravity's Rainbow and still rippling through Against the Day. In Weber's famous essay "Politics as a Vocation", he touches bottom on how a 'leader' emerges out of any group of people: charisma does it. Charisma: being seen to be differently better--naturally exceptional. People recognize the quality--and want to please whoever has it. A leader is a charismatic individual who can command followers. To want followers, however-- like politicians and religious figures, which are Weber's examples---is where the truth of 'power corrupts' begins. The truth that power corrupts emerges everywhere in Pynchon’s works.  From Gravity's Rainbow: "One of the dearest Postwar hopes: that there should be no room for a terrible disease like charisma." The villain in Vineland, is
 defined as charismatic. Contrast with a deliberately offhand image of a pile of T-shirts used by all in Against the Day.  Mr. Pynchon wants no followers of any kind and the deeper into him one reads, the more one can learn that follow oneself could be Pynchon's equivalent of Socrates' know thyself.
 
        I suggest that for Thomas Pynchon, to accept any public adulation, any award, any honor is by definition to be singled out--you  have to read him to get other resonances for this phrase as well--and would be the mirroring of charisma,  a deeply hypocritical act. Many Pynchon fans feel that the awarding of 
the Nobel to Elfride Jellineck a few years ago, whose body of work includes translating Gravity’s Rainbow into German, was the closest Pynchon will ever get to a Nobel. 
 
        However Mr. Pynchon may feel that he has not lived up to his own ideals,-- he may feel slothful, like Dr. Johnson, some writing suggests--- violating this ideal will never happen. A screaming would be heard across his brow.
 
 
 
Google Drive: create, share, and keep all your stuff in one place.  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20130510/73a2c6d2/attachment.html>