On Pyn's Privacy

Fri May 10 11:57:54 CDT 2013

the nobel was initially stated with a kind of social function, wasn't it?
to promote writers who promote universal goodwill and peace or something of
the kind?

the funny thing is with all the great lovable socially-minded weirdos the
nobel wasnt given to (tolstoy, borges) and the kind of annoying although
also great weirdos they did give it to (yeats, eliot), pynchon
not-getting-the-nobel only makes him look better.

(and we can be pretty sure, i think, that if he isn`t senile and he did win
he would probably pull some kind of lovely stunt, like he did with irvin
corey)

On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 10:40 AM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:

> I'm granting him a compliment in calling him human. He's not a fucking
> plaster saint. What writer or scientist or politician doesn't secretly
> fantasize about winning the Nobel prize? That's what it's like being human:
> the luxury of losing oneself in one's own private fantasies, which have
> nothing to do with one's public or even private persona. Intellectually
> rebuffing the Nobel prize and all it stands for, while emotionally wishing
> for the acclaim -- a very human way of being.
>
> Laura
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Kohut **
> Sent: May 10, 2013 10:08 AM
> To: "kelber at mindspring.com" **, "pynchon-l at waste.org" **
> Subject: Re: On Pyn's Privacy
>
> ****
> No, but I say he has never rued the line..............maybe because of his
> notion of "being human'.
>
>   *From:* "kelber at mindspring.com" <kelber at mindspring.com>
> *To:* pynchon-l at waste.org
> *Sent:* Friday, May 10, 2013 9:04 AM
> *Subject:* Re: On Pyn's Privacy
> **
> "All the oil money taken out of these fields by the Nobels has gone into
> Nobel prizes." -- from the Central Asian sequence in Gravity's Rainbow.
>
> I'm not saying that the Nobel committee would deprive him of the prize
> based solely on this snipe, but it might have been a factor here and there,
> over the years. And it certainly reflects Pynchon's view of the Nobel prize
> (which, being human, he later must have rued). Does anyone know of any
> other Nobel-eligible authors who called the Nobel family out by name?
>
> Laura
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Kohut
> Sent: May 10, 2013 8:40 AM
> To: pynchon -l
> Subject: On Pyn's Privacy
>
>  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.
>   [image: Document] On Why Pynchon Will Never Win the Nobel
> <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q_kOF8yXFDHY3-CI7O-x6pb31pLqhvrHXInXtSk3ujY/edit?usp=sharing&invite=COK3o5MP>
> 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. [image:
> Logo for Google Drive] <https://drive.google.com/>
>
> ****
> **********
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20130510/9e83081c/attachment.html>