Pynchon's influences

[Mark Kohut]

Do you wonder how TRP got interested in some of
the writers and thinkers that he uses in his fiction?
What do we actually know about that?

T.S. Eliot and some others I guess came from college and resonance thereof.
I want to believe he read The Recognitions in the navy (but we can't even
prove he
read that book fer sure, although it contains the phrase inherent vice and
a Calvinist theme
 which is good enough for me)

He has written about some. Many so naturally
of his time and of his place and interest, like McLuhan (mentioned in a
letter)
and Fromm and Marcuse and Arendt and NO Brown we can see as patterns in his
carpeting.

Others seem naturally occurring and I could go on.

Rilke appears in this scene for the first time, I think. I wonder how he
might have been
lead to Rilke. Anyone know with specificity?
Of course, Rilke is a great poet and becoming more popular over
P's younger lifetime, translated and read widely, so P might have just
wanted to read him and viola, resonance and deep influence.

But I now am thinking maybe he got to him from Hawkes, who we really don't
know directly that P read either, correct?, but in my fantasy speculation,
I suggest
he read him while in the navy too. Anyway, Hawkes found and used Rilke it
seems.
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