P's P's Please

[matthew cissell]

A big court case? no. A letter, yes - but maybe saying a bit more than
'Keep trying'. I mean that fit with the Wanda Letters, but remember when
CNN got too close?

At any rate it sounds like Boris is a respectful fan and a decent
journalist, so I suspect he knows that it is delicate territory and one
would do well to walk right. Christ, just the weight of the Pynchon
scholarly community calling someone out on a naff piece of print is enough
to make anyone with a brain think twice.

ciao
mc

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 10:15 AM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:

> Journalists don't do footnotes. It's possible a NYT piece would be
> fact-checked but less likely in the arts and culture sections. It
> would have been read by the lawyers though because of P's profile.
>
> But I can't imagine Pynchon engaging in a big court case because he
> felt misrepresented! At best there'd be another "keep trying" letter.
>
> On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 7:19 PM, matthew cissell <mccissell at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Paul,
> >
> > Not sure about your evaluation. Boris Kachka wrote the piece for Vulture
> > which belongs to NY Magazine, so from a journalistic point of view it's
> not
> > exactly a rag and I'm sure they have lawyers and editors to avoid
> problems
> > (like writing crap about an author that is as hooked up as TP - can you
> say
> > libel suit?).
> >
> > We might note that Kachka clearly attributes a lot of his information to
> > people that he cites in the piece. Where he does not state the source
> > clearly we might reasonably assume it's because the source didn't want
> to be
> > mentioned.
> >
> > Finally, a lack of footnotes in a journalistic piece like this is hardly
> a
> > sign of lacking investigative rigour. But I'll let other journalists
> judge
> > that.
> >
> > I'd say the piece looks pretty solid as far as the information provided
> is
> > concerned.
> >
> > ciao
> > mc
> >
> > On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 3:45 PM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> Not very authoritative.  No footnotes probably because sources aren't
> very
> >> authoritative either.
> >>
> >> On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 3:56 AM, matthew cissell <mccissell at gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Tyler,
> >>>
> >>> Thanks, I had forgetten about the Kachka piece. That must have been it,
> >>> but I thought I had come across something that referred to his parents
> later
> >>> years and a reconciliation of sorts.
> >>>
> >>> (What is the Pyn community consensus on the piece? I know that Jules
> >>> Siegel's Playboy interview is sometimes called into question on
> grounds of
> >>> motive (self-serving, revenge, etc.), but what about Boris' work?)
> >>>
> >>>    Ok, wait, you deserve big thanks my man. I went back to look at the
> >>> Kachka piece and not only does it have the line you mention, but it
> also,
> >>> further on, includes that in the 1990's, "Pynchon told friends he was
> seeing
> >>> a lot more of his parents" which following what we know about Pynchon's
> >>> politics and his parent's (father a Serious Republican and mother a
> serious
> >>> catholic and likely anti-semite) allows us to infer that there was at
> least
> >>> a rift of sorts that was then mended.
> >>>
> >>>   That's what I was after. I owe you a beer, or whatever.
> >>>
> >>> Very Appreciatively,
> >>> Matt Cissell
> >>>
> >>> On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 5:57 PM, Tyler Wilson <tbsqrd at hotmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Matthew —
> >>>>
> >>>> Though it isn't stated explicitly, that information can be gleaned
> from
> >>>> a couple passages of Boris Kachka's 2013 piece for Vulture:
> >>>>
> >>>> http://www.vulture.com/2013/08/thomas-pynchon-bleeding-edge.html
> >>>>
> >>>> " . . . he and his then-girlfriend, Mary Ann Tharaldsen, were driving
> >>>> through Big Sur when she complained of nausea. She wanted to stop at
> a bar
> >>>> and have a shot to settle her stomach. According to Tharaldsen, he
> exploded,
> >>>> telling her he would not tolerate midday drinking. When she asked
> why, he
> >>>> told her he’d seen his mother, after drinking,  accidentally puncture
> his
> >>>> father’s eye with a clothespin. It was the only time, says
> Tharaldsen, who
> >>>> lived with him, that he ever mentioned his family. “He was
> disconnected from
> >>>> them,” she says. “There seems to have been something not good there.”
> "
> >>>>
> >>>> "Pynchon and Jackson married in 1990 and had a son—first name
> Jackson—a
> >>>> year later. Pynchon told friends he was seeing a lot more of his
> parents. .
> >>>> . . "
> >>>>
> >>>> Cheers,
> >>>> --
> >>>> T
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> On Feb 18, 2016, at 3:59 AM, matthew cissell <mccissell at gmail.com>
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Dear P-listers,
> >>>>
> >>>> I have a problem and that is that I could swear that I read somewhere
> >>>> that  Pynchon had been a bit estranged from his folks but that he
> eventually
> >>>> made peace with them. Does that sound familiar to anyone? Where did
> that
> >>>> come from? I can't find the source now. Was it from Phyllis Gebauer?
> >>>>
> >>>> Beseechingly,
> >>>> mc otis
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >
>
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