It was 50 years ago today ...

[Dave Monroe]

On 11/22/13, Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:

> I'm trying to locate the letter Thomas Pynchon wrote to Charles
> Hollander. TRP said, in essence—"You're barking up the wrong tree, I
> only include enough "research" to cover the plots, my concerns are
> more with moving things along, characters, the usual literary stuff.
> You write too well to be producing this kind of material, you are
> wasting your talents" and so on. I remember something in the letter
> about "vowing not to give any advice" but expressing a need to steer
> "The Dude" in the right direction.

Dear Charles Hollander,

   It's nothing personal-- only that this year my new year's
resolutions include no complaining and no free advice to anybody about
what they should be doing with their lives, and responding to your
letters would have meant doing one or the other.

   At the same time, though, you write too well for me to be
discouraging you from it,  I just don't think you ought to be writing
about me. The sad truth is that you're giving me much too much credit.
My own research is nowhere near as deep or as conscientious as yours.
It is, in fact, as shallow as I think I can get away with, because I
don't write "novels of ideas."  Plot and character come first, just
like with most other folks's stuff, and the heavy thotz and
capitalized references and shit are in there to advance action, set
scenes, fill in characters and so forth, and the less of it I have to
do, the better for me cause I'm lazy.  Sorry to have to be the one to
tell you.  If you reverse polarity and read for mistakes, you'll see
this-- there are more, what Mr. Spock calls "errors", in Gravity's
Rainbow, for instance, than there are true facts.  And this is the
result of research habits and procedures about which "slovenly" is as
kind as one can get,

   But, there I go-- complaining again.

   So, as for collecting and publishing those old short stories, the
answer is no. It was nice of you to want to believe I had some
underlying coherent vision in mind, but I didn't. All it is is a bunch
of early attempts-- insufferably smart-assed, juvenile, and worst o
all not thought out.  Viking is also making noises about reprinting
them, and they are getting no for an answer just like you.

   As long as I've been complaining, I might as well make with the
free advice here-- you are too good to be wasting your time and energy
writing about somebody else's stuff.  You ought to be doing your own.
If your March 20th letter is an indication, you already see this and
are doing something about it, so I don't feel like that much of a
busybody telling you.

   Of course silence is hard to interpret.  If it wasn't they'd call
it "English," or something.

   Yours truly,

   Thomas Pynchon

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0905&msg=135333

... me, I read that as nor only self-effacing (even as it declares
rumors of the death of the author to be greatly exaggerated), but more
than a little disingenuous ...
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l