Thomas Pynchon "appears" on "The John Larroquette Show"

[Dave Monroe]

http://articles.latimes.com/1994-03-20/news/tv-36140_1_john-larroquette-show

On Sun, Jul 5, 2015 at 3:32 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
<lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>
> Old hat but I had never watched it --- and it's quite a gem!
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM98iFKu0ss
>
>> Those who follow Pynchon's occasional transgressions of his own wall of
>> secrecy will remember his relationship with The John Larroquette Show.
>> Larroquette considers himself a pretty literate guy, and is a big fan of
>> Pynchon, so he started slipping references to Pynchon into the show.
>> Eventually, the writers sent a script mentioning TP off to the man himself.
>> The script called for TP to be represented on camera by an extra with his
>> back turned, but Pynchon vetoed that idea. Nonetheless, the plot of the
>> episode revolves around a character who claimed he knows Pynchon. Before the
>> show was cancelled, the writers managed to squeeze in a few more TP
>> references, including one in which the the girl from Blossom assumes the
>> name of a character from V.<
>
> http://amysrobot.com/archives/2004/01/the_history_of_thomas_pynchon.php
> http://dangerousminds.net/comments/thomas_pynchon_wears_a_roky_erickson_shirt
>
>> Here’s the meat of the story reported by the Times:
>
> Pynchon has a special love for the losers lost on the wayside of the
> American dream. So co-executive producer Larroquette decided to feature
> Pynchon in a script and sent the work-in-progress to Pynchon’s agent for
> approval.
>
> “We made up a novel that he hasn’t written—and he gave us permission to say
> that he had written ‘Pandemonium of the Sun,’ ” Larroquette says.
>
> The mysterious, never-photographed Pynchon refused, however, to let a
> “Larroquette” extra, in a plaid shirt, be videotaped from the rear and
> represented as Pynchon.
>
> One scene called for Hemingway’s antagonist, the lunch counter operator,
> Dexter (Daryl “Chill” Mitchell), to reveal, quite casually, that he’s a
> longtime pal of the much-traveled writer.
>
> “You must have seen him, he was sitting here last night!” Dexter insists.
> The script says Pynchon was wearing a T-shirt with the picture of a certain,
> obscure musician.*
>
> “Pynchon, through his agent, wrote back and says, ‘Would you please make it
> a picture of Rocky [sic] Erickson on the T-shirt?’ ” Larroquette says.
>
> “I looked up Rocky Erickson. He was a psychedelic rock ‘n’ roll musician in
> the ‘60s who was institutionalized shortly thereafter and spent most of the
> rest of his life in an insane asylum. Somebody that Pynchon liked, I guess.”
> <
>
>
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