Tristan Taormino mentions Uncle Tom

[Mark Kohut]

Roth was set for life with the book sales of Portnoy. All told, around $4
mil....or up to $40 Mil inflation adjusted to the present....

pynchon made enough to live on after Lot 49 and then GR, bestseller and
both paperbacks----Lot 49 particularly sold strongly in
paperback before GR....and steadily, royalties flowing...

And we know TRP won that MacArthur Grant...in the eighties.....

Except for all the mutual savings in living together, I'll bet TRP and
Melanie kept finances pretty separate....

On Mon, Sep 11, 2023 at 4:59 AM matthew cissell <mccissell at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Eric,
>
> Thanks. It adds some info to the TP bio albeit without exact dates. But
> let's see.
>
> Tristan was born in 1971 and raised primarily by her mother on Long Island
> (thanks Wikipedia). She says that TP "he lived with us when I was a baby,
> when I was young." So that would be early to mid-'70's? And he was "between
> places"? (Try that line on your next date and see how far it goes.) He
> hasn't met Melanie Jackson yet (I assume), he is in the midst of prolonged
> writer's block (as from a letter he wrote), and is disenchanted by literary
> fame (he skips the Big Lit Dinner event). Maybe he takes care of her
> sometimes, eating all the Count Chocula.
>
> The price one pays for positioning oneself as TP has done is clear. Had he
> written more realistic and accessible (if a bit 'scandalous') material he
> could have gone the route of Roth. *Portnoy's Complaint* was published in
> '69 and made into a movie by '72. (Many more such followed.) The royalties
> would make things easier for Roth; his position would allow him to
> convert his Cultural Capital into Economic Capital more quickly and at a
> greater scale. Moreover, the more prizes and accolades you acquire, the
> more they bestow upon you.
>    Fortunately, Pynchon has his wife to help him out.
>
> ciao
> mc otis
>
> On Sat, Sep 9, 2023 at 1:12 AM Erik T. Burns <eburns at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > https://jezebel.com/tristan-taormino-sex-writer-memoir-1850818210
> >
> > I love that your uncle Thomas Pynchon makes some cameos in the book, as
> he
> > has on The Simpsons.
> >
> > He’s known to elude the media. Like, the photograph they run is his
> college
> > yearbook photo from Cornell. He is notoriously very, very private,
> perhaps
> > one of the great reclusive literary minds of our time. This gets back to
> > the issue of one, not capitalizing on that relationship, which would be
> > shitty, and two, not wanting to violate his privacy. And of course, I
> know
> > things about him. This isn’t in the book, but at some point he lived with
> > my mom and me. He was like, between places or something, and so he lived
> > with us when I was a baby, when I was young. Especially when I was
> younger,
> > I had a lot of contact with him. The truth is, he did stand out to me in
> my
> > family as the most similar to me. He was a weirdo and he was eccentric
> and
> > he was brilliant and he was affectionate in a way that none of the other
> > people on that side of my family were. I felt drawn to him just
> > automatically. That’s why he is identified in my book as Uncle Tom,
> because
> > to me, he’s Uncle Tom.
> >
> > Are you still in touch?
> >
> > Yeah, I sent him the book. I look forward to hearing from him.
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>