Unscrewing the navel allusion

[Ben Canard]

The manuscript was delivered to Lippincott in June. Smith left for
Cleveland in July, probably the Friday before the date on the memo, which I
believe was a Monday. Smith met Pat Mahool in Cleveland; she never became
Sale. Faith (her maiden name escapes me at the moment) is the college
friend who married Kirk Sale, also a college friend of Pynchon's. Faith was
working at Lippincott at the time; Mahool somewhere else. Pynchon did meet
Smith in November, apparently saying nothing about the novel.

Pynchon had not written the novel and if I recall correctly needed the
money to get to Seattle; in any case, he started working at Boeing in Feb.


On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 4:13 PM, Jeff Sunbury <jsunbury at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks Ben. That's certainly more detailed information about the letters
> between Pynchon and Smith than the letter from April 1962 cited in the
> student thesis linked above. That letter specifically regards revisions
> that Smith suggested to the narrative structure in Ch.9 - Mondaugen's
> Story.  So, if I follow correctly, the contract for V. was signed in Jan.
> 1960, Pynchon met Smith in Seattle later in 1960 and the first draft of the
> typescript was delivered to Smith in Cleveland, Ohio on July 10, 1961 at an
> American Library Association conference by Pat Sale (nee Mahool) who
> Pynchon knew from Cornell and who did the actual typing of the MS. I'm
> surprised by the meager $500 advance even considering those are 1961
> dollars.
>
>
> On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 2:21 PM, Ben Canard <bencanard2000 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> https://www.pynchon.net/owap/article/view/27/59 Sorry I forgot the link.
>>
>>
>> On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 3:19 PM, Ben Canard <bencanard2000 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> 1962 is an error the typescript was turned in June of 1961, as best as
>>> can be determined. Here's an article about a memo in which the writer
>>> discusses accepting it.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 11:53 AM, Jeff Sunbury <jsunbury at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>> I love that story. The mental image conjures a cartoon by Don Martin
>>>> (w/ MAD magazine 1956-1988) in which a man pulls an annoying hair from his
>>>> shoulder with the sound effect "POINK" and his arm drops off.
>>>>
>>>> inre the publication of V. - I re-read V. in March this year and came
>>>> across a 2009 grad student thesis: (RE)VISIONS OF GENOCIDE:NARRATIVES
>>>> OF GENOCIDE IN THOMAS PYNCHON’S V. AND GRAVITY’S <http://repository.library.georgetown.edu/bitstream/handle/10822/553016/joycePeytonMeigs.pdf?sequence=1>
>>>> RAINBOW<http://repository.library.georgetown.edu/bitstream/handle/10822/553016/joycePeytonMeigs.pdf?sequence=1> that
>>>> refers to an April 1962 typescript draft of V. in letters between Pynchon
>>>> and his Lippincott editor, Corlies 'Corky' Smith, also, the ref. 'Smith,
>>>> Shawn. Pynchon and History: Metahistorical Rhetoric and Postmodern
>>>> Narrative Form in the Novels of Thomas Pynchon. New York: Routledge, 2005.
>>>> I'm new to this P-list so this may be old news.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 9:45 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> It is 1958. "Candida was delighted by [Robert] Gottleib's [S & S
>>>>> editor] enthusiasm for the Catch--18 manuscript.[[only 75 pages]. Finally,
>>>>> someone got it! "Ii thought my navel would unscrew and my ass would
>>>>> fall off, " she often said to describe her happiness
>>>>> when negotiations went well with an editor."   She had also received a
>>>>> positive response from Tom Ginsberg at Viking.
>>>>>
>>>>> S & S, we know, did publish Catch-22 and Ginsberg, a decade later,
>>>>> Gravity's Rainbow.
>>>>>
>>>>> I think it is clear from the stuff about Candida from this bio that
>>>>> Pynchon woudda probably read Catch-18 while he was writing
>>>>> V. as, at least I hinted at,,\ I say proudly full of myself, when
>>>>> I think I found some echoes of Heller in the early parts of V....
>>>>> Candida sent it, gave it, to about everybody.
>>>>>
>>>>> Catch--22 was not published until October 1961,  approximately 6--9
>>>>> months before V. would have been set to be published by
>>>>> Lippincott in early 1963. (We know part of V. was published in 1961,
>>>>> but I do not know when V., finished, was offered to
>>>>> publishers, if it was...(that is, unless CD had made a deal early with
>>>>> Lippincott based on a major part of it.)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
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