Unscrewing the navel allusion

[Jeff Sunbury]

Erik, thanks for the obit on Faith Sale.
>From Herman and Krafft - 'Fast Learner' (pg.15):
Pynchon must have exchanged quite a few letters with Faith Sale during that
final period, and one of them is part of the batch acquired by the HRC
along with the typescript. This October 1-2 (1962) letter not only confirms
one of the substantial galley-stage cuts, but also shows that, remarkably,
Pynchon let Sale decide a number of details for herself at the last moment
when he was "neutral" about them. In a letter of March 9,1963, also owned
by the HRC, Pynchon expresses his gratitude to Sale "for all [she] did for
the book" ,with a quotation from the composer Ralph Vaughn Williams. Just
like a specific rendition of the last movement of his sixth symphony, her
editorial decisions were "'positive, sensitive, pianissimo.'"


On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 8:40 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Yes, others remember this joke from way back too....I just
> wondered speculatively whether Pynchon used it because he
> heard it from Candida, first or repeated. Surprised me to read her use of
> it.
>
>   *From:* Henry M <scuffling at gmail.com>
> *To:* Pynchon Liste <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> *Sent:* Sunday, May 12, 2013 7:22 AM
>
> *Subject:* Re: Unscrewing the navel allusion
>
> When I was a young boy, my father told me the story of a young man who,
> upon discovering that his navel had a slot like a screwhead does, took a
> screwdriver to it and found that it unscrewed just like a screw does.  He
> kept at it until his ass fell off.  There are variations.
>
> Yours truly,
> ٩(●̮̮̃•̃)۶
> Henry Musikar, CISSP
> http://astore.amazon.com/tdcoccamsaxe-20
>
>
> 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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