From Fred Gardner in the Anderson Valley Advertiser

[Erik T. Burns]

Wanda Tinasky And Related Matters – Anderson Valley Advertiser
<https://theava.com/archives/274126>

Wanda Tinasky And Related Matters
By Fred Gardner on October 5, 2025

Correspondence With Kipen

On Nov. 29, 2000 S.F. Chronicle book editor David Kipen wrote a rave review
of Donald Foster’s book “Author Unknown.” Kipen especially liked the
chapter in which Foster identified Tom Hawkins —not Tom Pynchon— as the
author of the Wanda Tinasky letters to the AVA and other Mendocino
publications. Because he falsely described my role in compiling the Tinasky
letters, I e-mailed Kipen on Dec. 3:

Note to David Kipen

I was sorry to see you repeat Donald Foster’s inaccurate putdown of me in
the Chronicle. I thought you’d been following the situation closely enough
and long enough to know better…

What’s true is that I set out in early ‘95 to compile the WT letters and to
evaluate Bruce Anderson’s hypothesis that Pynchon had written them. But in
June, when Pynchon’s wife/agent denied authorship on his behalf, I told all
concerned, including Bruce, that we had to focus on the Mendocino
possibilities and shouldn’t make any false claims.

I was never for a second in a "partnership" with T.R. Factor. She
desperately wanted to get involved in the project and I thought I had a
good assignment for her: pursuing the Mendocino leads (which well may have
led to Hawkins). She refused because she was convinced that Pynchon was the
author and no further investigation was needed. Bruce endorsed her approach
and they published "The Letters of Wanda Tinasky" (vers libre, $22) with
the Pynchon-was-Wanda intro, over my objections.

David Kipen wrote back an e-pology of sorts on 12/4:

“… in retrospect, i could have been more accurate, and i apologize. I had
forgotten that your name wasn't on the book. but all i said was:

‘Independent scholars Fred Gardner and TR Factor argued that Pynchon wrote
the letters while working on his 1990 California novel, “Vineland." They
published a collection of Tinasky's letters in 1996, at which point
Pynchon's agent stepped forward and -- like Joe Klein, at first -- denied
the whole thing…What might it mean, too, that brilliant scholars who've
devoted their lives to Pynchon's gloriously humane oeuvre could still
confuse it, even for a moment, with the jottings of a barely published,
sympathetic but ultimately homicidal postal clerk?’

Would you like me to apologize for the implication that you're brilliant
too? why not review some upcoming book for me soon - say, gerry nicosia's
vietnam book, unless you have a better idea - and we'll call it square.

No offense intended, and with all due gratitude for you role in clarying
the whole affair, david”
------------------------------

Of course I accepted the invitation:

To: David Kipen

Sent: 12/4/2000 6:36 PM

Subject: Re: Not for publication

Thanks for your note; I wasn't asking for an apology… I assumed the
"brilliant scholar" reference was to Ed Mendelson. I won't know until I see
it if I'd have anything useful to say about gerry nicosia's vietnam book.
Will you send it along?

Ed Mendelson is a Columbia University English professor who was convinced
that Pynchon had written the Tinasky letters until Pynchon’s agent/wife
told him otherwise. Kipen himself had written something implying that he
thought Pynchon was Tinasky… Brilliant scholars, indeed… Kipen replied the
same day—

“…it's not out yet. but you have dibs. remind me if i forget, or if

something else grabs you. you ever write one of these?

best, david”

Which made me wonder if he was having second thoughts… I wrote back right
away to reassure him:

I have written a few book reviews for various publications over the years.
I assume you'll provide guidelines —length, etc. FG

Kipen wrote back adding another hurdle:

“i sure will. can you send me a sample?”

Only at this point did it occur to me that the original offer was kind of
condescending. David Kipen assumed he could cancel out a careless insult by
allowing me to write for the sacred Chronicle book section… And I went for
it! Only to be insulted again! Am I the schmuck of the earth?

Before I got around to writing Kipen a self-destructive kiss-off note, a
book arrived that I figured I ought to review for The Chronicle. It’s about
the medical marijuana movement —in fact, the book covers exactly the same
story I’d been following all these years without an outlet… A review would
enable me to make a few important points about our government’s grotesque
stall in the name of science, and the takeover of our movement by Soros’s
operatives, and the Chronicle’s refusal to cover the subject in a sustained
way, minimizing the significance of the vote for Prop 215, ignoring the
struggle for implementation.

So I swallowed my pride and e-mailed Kipen January 12:

A book has just been published that I'd like to review for the Chronicle
—Waiting to Inhale by Alan Bock, published by Seven Locks Press in Santa
Ana. It's about the medical marijuana movement in California. Bock is an
Orange County Register reporter who has covered the story since '96.

Okay? Please advise,

Note that I hadn’t asked for a copy, just the green light to review it.
Kipen’s reply didn’t come until Feb. 1—

“ I'm afraid the publisher never coughed up a review copy. It's getting a
little late to be doing a january book anyway, but please keep an eye
peeled for something else suitable. What/who again do you consider your
stocks in trade? Also, I'm about to curl up with david hajdu's new book
about dylan, baez, the farinas and you know who in the village circa '64.
Can you recommend a nice reading spot, redolent with pynchon scat,
someplace in sf?

All finest,

david”

I replied Feb. 5

Note to David Kipen:

I'm not sure I understand —you want me to advise you where you should be,
physically, while reading this new book? Also, the Chron doesn't review
books after they're a month old? Even if they've been ignored? Even if the
subject is one of the most significant, under-reported stories of our time
and place? Well…

You’re the man, Kipen. Have you assigned the forthcoming anthology of
Dashiell Hammett's letters?

As ever,

Fred Gardner
------------------------------

Afterthoughts

Not every scene and every line in Pynchon’s ouevre is "gloriously humane."
To me some of it has a perverse, repellent edge —just like the Tinasky
letters. Wasn’t there a scene in Gravity’s Rainbow where Malcolm X goes
down a toilet bowl? What about the Humbert Humbert stuff?

The amazing Wanda Tinasky caper was set in Mendocino, but you could say it
took place along the borderlines between obscurity and fame, reality and
print, and that our recent correspondence is an extension of it. It was
thought-provoking and humbling (made me feel uncultured). Properly laid
out, it would have made a great book no matter who the author turned out to
be. You almost got this in your review.

The rich/poor system creates very little room at the top financially and
the culture reflects that. In many fields you’re either a star or you’re
nameless. The difference in skill level between basketball players who make
the NBA and those who don’t is really thin. Why shouldn’t the same apply to
writers? And musicians? And scientists? And many others? I suppose that
after years of inadequate re-enforcement the unsuccessful ones tend to give
up, find other ways of making a living, while the winners, thriving on
kudos and support, are more likely to keep improving. Tom Hawkins was lucky
to find an outlet in his late fifties; it enabled him to produce some
fantastic material.

I thought about Wanderin’ Tom last week when I heard Jason Epstein on the
radio, shilling for his memoir “Book Business,” casually boasting that he
had invented the “quality” paperback. But Harper’s —not Doubleday, where
Jason was an editor in the early ‘50s— brought out the first successful
quality line. This was the kind of number that Wanda Tinasky used to call,
so adroitly, in the paper of record… Jason Epstein, jogging his victory lap
with Terri Gross, recalling how he and Vladimir Nabokov, at the Ritz Bar in
Paris, had toasted Richard Nixon… Nabokov was all for U.S. intervention in
Vietnam, convinced it would hasten the fall of the Soviet Union and the
return of his family estates… How right he was!

Wanda Tinasky was a provocateur
Traveled with a pun on every hand
All along the countryside, crashed on many a floor
And was even known to tease an honest man

In Mendocino County, a time they talk about
In the pages of the press he or she took a stand
And soon the situation there was equally in doubt
The great ones just leave footnotes in the sand

All along the Internet that name will resound
And the real identity be proved and improved
And everyone around will tell you how they found
The fingerprint, the signature move

PS. Vineland Flick/Movie Review:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/29/opinion/one-battle-after-another-fascism.html