WE KNEW IT! We knew it here from that writer-handyman guy who overheard a phone call InWoodstock...there are bits of Pynchon in Dylan, I say, have said...

[J Tracy]

Ok, I get the logic of it now, how it all hinges on knowing the 2 writers have the same agent which I did not really get. . I  still do not like the lack of names or the sentence about obliviousness, gets rather hearsay and name droppy, and  raises a question of how does it inform a reader about either Dylan or Pynchon? These are very private people. Has Dylan ever mentioned P or his work? I once suggested on another ATD discussion apart from the list that the part where Reef goes to New Orleans and Meets Wolf Tone ORooney talking anarchist theory etc. might be loosely modeled after Dylan’s Tangled up in Blue : drifted down to New Orleans ,...music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air… the only thing he knew how to do was to keep on keeping on like a bird that flew ( they head to Europe.in ATD)Bit of a stretch but I just know how much I like that part of the song and that that’s what reading that part of ATD triggered as an internal reference.


> On Wed, Feb 11, 2026 at 2:06 PM Mike Weaver <mike.weaver at zen.co.uk <mailto:mike.weaver at zen.co.uk>> wrote:
>> There's no mention of Dylan and Pynchon meeting in Hadju's Positively 
>> 4th Street, but Hadju quotes many times from a fax interview he 
>> conducted with P and a letter from P to Mimi Farina.
>> 
>> Talking about the contrast between Dicks craving for attention and 
>> Pynchon's aversion
>> 
>> > As Pynchon recalled (later, in a letter to Mimi), “I know it’s dumb to 
>> > have an anti-photograph Thing, but it’s how I am. Dick used to kid me 
>> > about it—what’s the matter, you afraid people are going to stick pins, . 
>> > pour aqua regia? So how could I tell him yeah, yeah, right, you got it.”
>> You know about this?
>> Episode 16 - Rainbow Quest by Pete Seeger: Mimi and Richard Farina
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRuuZY8otz0
>> 
>> cheers
>> Mike
>> 
>> On 11/02/2026 15:59, J Tracy wrote:
>> >   I would not be surprised if Pynchon knew Dylan, but the paragraph does not hold together logically. The first obvious break in logic comes in this line: "The phone call, and that detail entered the story, which out of respect or obliviousness didn't then connect the dots. “  It would be the writer, not the story who ( not which) out of respect or obliviousness would connect the dots( a story cannot be oblivious or act out of respect) .  But confusion also comes from the question of who the interviewing writer/journalist is. That confusion is seriously amplified by the next sentence:  “The novelist was telling the journalist that Thomas Pynchon introduced him to Bob Dylan.”  Who is the novelist in this sentence.? Isn’t Pynchon the novelist who was being talked to? It’s like saying the Pynchon was telling the the journalist that Thomas Pynchon introduced him( who is the him?) to Bob Dylan. I honestly don’t see how this can be forced into coherence.
>> >
>> > This is not an argument to be argumentative. i was sincerely curious, but the paragraph felt strained and blurry, so I re-read it and felt even more like something was off so I tried to parse the logic, which IMO fails to cohere.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >> On Feb 11, 2026, at 10:11 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com <mailto:mark.kohut at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> ??????
>> >>
>> >> "The novelist was telling the journalist that Thomas Pynchon introduced him
>> >> to Bob Dylan."
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> On Wed, Feb 11, 2026 at 10:03 AM Laura Kelber <laurakelber at gmail.com <mailto:laurakelber at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> The novelist was sitting for a print interview about his book? Not
>> >>> Pynchon.
>> >>>
>> >>> On Wed, Feb 11, 2026, 8:35 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com <mailto:mark.kohut at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>>> https://x.com/whitecitycinema/status/2021440442177552639?s=20
>> >>>> --
>> >>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>> >>>>
>> >> --
>> >> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l