Watts and its publication - the importance of relations

[John Bailey]

That's true, wasn't thinking about that so much.

On Sat, Oct 31, 2015 at 1:04 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Don't forget the 1984 introduction
>
> On Friday, October 30, 2015, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I've been wondering about Pynchon's non-fiction too, especially the
>> Luddite and Sloth essays in the NYT book review.I just can't imagine a
>> new piece of non-fiction by Thomas Pynchon appearing in a newspaper or
>> magazine today. It's unfathomable. Those two essays came out when he
>> had no book to spruik, either. At least Watts makes sense in the great
>> way Matthew has posited here, as the nascent expression of a growing
>> political consciousness. But Luddite and Sloth are real outliers. And
>> he didn't refrained from returning to the form, unless we count that
>> weird Daily Show thing I'd forgotten about.
>>
>> On Sat, Oct 31, 2015 at 2:39 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Always great detail,Matthew.
>> >
>> > I have sortaalways seen this,once I knew about Kirkpatrick
>> > Sales position as a possible favor to hiM. Maybe K and Faith
>> > told him it would help give his (latest)fiction more attention. I'm sure
>> > enoough
>> > that his publisher would have liked it. They always do. They do believe
>> > such
>> > non-fic appearances do help sales. They build a credibility,
>> > prestigious 'platform'
>> > as you rightly allude to as today's word.
>> >
>> > Maybe, as he said re Lot 49,he sorta needed the money?--would be
>> > waiting awhile  for any Lot 49 monies and When did he get any GR
>> > advance,do
>> > you know?
>> >
>> > My reasoning,TRP overwhelmingly wanted to ONLY(?) (virtually) write
>> > fiction.
>> > his few non-fic pieces are for certain almost-personal reasons....
>> >
>> > Non-fic makes one a public person, so to speak (sorta)---with
>> > non-ambiguous
>> > opinions etc.......he doesn't want much of this....
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 7:41 AM, matthew cissell <mccissell at gmail.com>
>> > wrote:
>> >>      Does anyone know if it has been noted somewhere, that is in the
>> >> research and whatnot, that when Pynchon wrote his Watts piece it was
>> >> published in the New York Times Magazine where Kirk Sale was working
>> >> as Editor at the time? It was published on June 12, on the tail of a
>> >> month of reviews of his then most recent novel, CL49.
>> >>
>> >>     It would be intersting to know if this just happened as such or if
>> >> there was some more calculated release.
>> >>
>> >>   We know that CL49 appears first in Esquire Dec. 1965 and then the
>> >> fragment "The Shrink Flips" in Cavalier in March, only to be published
>> >> as a book ("short story with glandular problems") a few months later.
>> >>
>> >> But what about the Journey? We know it looks back to the events in LA
>> >> in Aug 1965, but it starts by mentioning the murder of Leonard
>> >> Deadwyler on May 7th 1966. This is while reviews are coming out about
>> >> CL49. (Richard Poirier gave a positive one on May 1 in the NYT.)
>> >>
>> >>   I don't see it as very calculating in terms of sales. In fact, it
>> >> strikes me more as something from one who has come of age in terms of
>> >> a critical regard toward society and has decided to express that
>> >> concern in an essay that, given his contacts and platform (that's the
>> >> word they use now), was easily and rapidly published.
>> >>
>> >>    What's more, it's interesting to me that so many of what appear to
>> >> be significant events in Pynchon's social and political development
>> >> were in relation to Kirk Sale. First the student protests at Cornell
>> >> in '58, then his Journey essay in '66, and finally signing the
>> >> anti-war letter that Sale also signed. These constitute public
>> >> expressions of a growing political consciousness. Is it not an
>> >> argument for the importance of the relation of subjects in a given
>> >> field?
>> >>
>> >> ciao
>> >> mc otis
>> >> -
>> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>> > -
>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
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