An unexpected friendship? Was to me. And most/all? of the Plisters, I suggest

[Mark Thibodeau]

Wow, that's very cool.

One thing I'd like to point out... LeCarre seems to have a lot of high
profile admirers. I didn't know that Pynchon was a fan. I did, however,
know that LeCarre was a frequent dinner guest of - and his books greatly
admired by - Stanley Kubrick.

Perhaps something in his spy work appeals to the recluse?

Jerky

On Wed, Jan 22, 2020 at 7:56 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> + ... "DEAR TOM GUINZBURG WHEREVER YOU ARE, I THOUGHT YOU WOULD LIKE TO
> KNOW I'M NUMBER EIGHT AND MY FRIEND FREDDIE IS NUMBER TWO."/ Pynchon was
> referring to the fact that Frederick Forsyth's second thriller, THE
> ODESSA FILE, was No. 2 on the NEW YORK TIMES bestseller list and
> GRAVITY'S RAINBOW was No. 8 ... +
>
>
> https://books.google.de/books?id=btgXCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT127&lpg=PT127&dq=frederick+forsyth+pynchon&source=bl&ots=XzztUaCr-x&sig=ACfU3U2w-d_zdetjCnDUBZyOPsvwhe1IvA&hl=de&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiB9fPp0ZTnAhVS4aQKHZaLBZQQ6AEwAnoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=frederick%20forsyth%20pynchon&f=fals
> <
> https://books.google.de/books?id=btgXCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT127&lpg=PT127&dq=frederick+forsyth+pynchon&source=bl&ots=XzztUaCr-x&sig=ACfU3U2w-d_zdetjCnDUBZyOPsvwhe1IvA&hl=de&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiB9fPp0ZTnAhVS4aQKHZaLBZQQ6AEwAnoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=frederick%20forsyth%20pynchon&f=false
> >
> e
>
> One might infer that the friendship began around the time of Freddie's
> first book, a runaway bestseller,* The Day of the Jackal.* 1971 His
> publisher was
>  Viking. Pynchon's publisher..
>
> *“The Day of the Jackal makes such comparable books such as The Manchurian
> Candidate and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold seem like Hardy Boy
> mysteries.”—The New York Times    ( memory or recreated one: made me want
> to read it---but I didn't) *
>
> Such a quote *would *appeal to TRP. We know he has read Le Carre and liked
> him without reservations of 'genre'. We also seem to know that he often,
> through his agent, Ms Donadio and other industry insiders, got new books to
> read before they were published*. Catch--22* seems almost circumstantially
> provable as just one he read before publication.
>
> Then there is the forgotten Richard Condon. of *The Manchurian Candidate.
> *Once
> compared to "satirists" like, O, Thomas Pynchon and some other black
> humorists. (Latterly, discredited for some plagiarism, including, someone
> showed, passages of MC 'taken' from Graves,* I, Claudius.! *[A post-modern
> mixer before the mix times? ] Famous for his* LISTS!*! Pynchon list fans.
> Famous for extended metaphors ---"complex sentences that go bang at the
> end"...and for
> the fiction of information. Condon to Pynchon, like those
> lost English writers who did the inferior Hamlets and King Lears before
> Shakey?
> Wikipedia: "The fiction of information"[edit
> <
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Richard_Condon&action=edit&section=4
> >
> ]
>
> Condon's works are difficult to categorize precisely: A 1971 *Time magazine
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_magazine>* review declared that,
> "Condon was never a satirist: he was a riot in a satire factory. He raged
> at Western civilization and every last one of its works. He decorticated
> the Third Reich, cheese fanciers, gossip columnists and the Hollywood star
> system with equal and total frenzy." [6]
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Condon#cite_note-6> The headline of
> his obituary in *The New York Times* called him a "political novelist",[7]
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Condon#cite_note-NYT-7> but went on
> to say that, "Novelist is too limited a word to encompass the world of Mr.
> Condon. He was also a visionary, a darkly comic conjurer, a student of
> American mythology and a master of conspiracy theories, as vividly
> demonstrated in 'The Manchurian Candidate.'"[7]
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Condon#cite_note-NYT-7> Although
> his
> books combined many different elements, including occasional outright
> fantasy and science fiction, they were, above all, written to entertain the
> general public. He had, however, a genuine disdain, outrage, and even
> hatred for many of the mainstream political corruptions that he found so
> prevalent in American life. In a 1977 quotation, he said that:[8]
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Condon#cite_note-8>
>
> "...people are being manipulated, exploited, murdered by their servants,
> who have convinced these savage, simple-minded populations that they are
> their masters, and that it hurts the head, if one thinks. People accept
> servants as masters. My novels are merely entertaining persuasions to get
> the people to think in other categories."
>
> With his long lists of absurd trivia and "mania for absolute details",
> Condon was, along with Ian Fleming
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Fleming>, one of the early exemplars of
> those called by Pete Hamill <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Hamill> in
> a *New York Times* review, "the practitioners of what might be called the
> New Novelism... Condon applies a dense web of facts to fiction.... There
> might really be two kinds of fiction: the fiction of sensibility and the
> fiction of information... As a practitioner of the fiction of information,
> no one else comes close to him."[9]
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Condon#cite_note-9>
> Quirks and characteristics[edit
> <
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Richard_Condon&action=edit&section=5
> >
> ]
>
> Condon attacked his targets wholeheartedly but with a uniquely original
> style and wit that made almost any paragraph from one of his books
> instantly recognizable. Reviewing one of his works in the *International
> Herald Tribune*, playwright George Axelrod
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Axelrod> (*The Seven Year Itch
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Year_Itch_(play)>*, *Will Success
> Spoil Rock Hunter
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Success_Spoil_Rock_Hunter>*), who had
> collaborated with Condon on the screenplay for the film adaptation of *The
> Manchurian Candidate*, wrote:
>
> "The arrival of a new novel by Richard Condon is like an invitation to a
> party.... the sheer gusto of the prose, the madness of his similes, the
> lunacy of his metaphors, his infectious, almost child-like joy in composing
> complex sentences that go bang at the end in the manner of exploding cigars
> is both exhilarating and as exhausting as any good party ought to be."
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>