M&D Duck Read. Publishing pre-history.

[Mark Kohut]

Since one of those four was a Godzilla-like novel, obviously not ever published,
a few seem to think it got folded conceptually into Against the Day.

On Sun, Jan 4, 2015 at 12:57 PM, M Thomas Stevenson
<m.thomas.stevenson at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ahhh I remember the quote about Pynchon ("allegedly") saying he had four books on the go around the time of TCOL49, event if the millennium and so forth, always hunched something like this. . .
>
> On 4 January 2015, at 17:36, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> So, Mason & Dixon took about 7 years to write after
> Pynchon took 17 years for Vineland? One book after another
> like most writers?
>
> Seems very NOT for him. First, we know he had 'the idea' for
> Mason & Dixon by the late sixties per his letter to Corlies Smith.
>
>  Michael Dirda, Wash Post reviewer said in a review
> that it was known that Thomas Pynchon signed at least two contracts
> for different books in 1973, after GR was published. One was obviously
> M & D, Dirda said the other was for Vineland. Others, later,--one
> being John Leonard--
> spoke of the second book more like what Against the Day was when published.
>
> So, this "seems" true: TRP was writing M & D at least since 1973. Of
> course, only he and
> a few others who aren't us, know fer sure.
>
> I think, given the end-of-sixties theme(s) of Vineland, Pynchon did
> not have it in mind
> when he signed those '73 contracts. Plus, that one would not take his
> longest hunk of Time, imho.
>  I think he worked on Against the Day and M &D since GR-if not
> before-and Vineland developed conceptually and in the writing as he
> lived the unfolding of his America.
>
> Speculator Pete.
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
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