The Pynchon Media-Industrial Complex

[Mark Kohut]

Let me give an alternate history if I may....also speculative based on what
little we know about him.
V. won the most prestigious first novel prize offered, the Penn-Faulkner
Award....reviewed favorably all over
and by many heavyweights; Tanner, Poirer, others....from the prize-winning
story and placement of other stories---led by his famous Cornell
creative writing teacher---he got one of the best agents in the business
for all his work, done--other stories and to come. I'm pretty sure he saved
money from
his Boeing job and I think it is possible he quit because, writing always
his career, he had enough money to write now esp from the award and
sales....Candida Donadio
got V. into the modern Library at some point--it is the editionI have....It
isn't in Modern Library any longer and seemed to disappear when he got
Melanie as his agent---my self-educated guess is he never wanted it there.,
as in my experienced guess as to why he never accepts awards: Standing out
like that is against his vision of the way to live....(a
promised appearance of* Gravity's Rainbow* in Everyman's Library, --it was
in the catalog!---, also disappeared when Melanie became his agent...

By the time of The Cry9ing of Lot 49, I think we have learned from letters
or friends that he did "need' more money to continue GR and the magazines
were paying...I do not think
it had anything (much) to do with REAL deadlines because that first mag hit
was the immediate one and mags can usually and often do just move to a
later month...they have stories lined up and few are so contingent on any
one month....he revised and revised (again) I believe The Crying of Lot 49
and as I think we learned from the Slow Learner introduction that he would
never make any kind of unresearched or unthought-thru mistake----(of course
minor things did but GIVEN what complexities )....remember "tendril" in
that intro...besides even if Lippincott---a new publisher for him had set a
deadline for submission as almost all contracts do they would move any such
back to get the unrevised version into major mags---THAT sells books....
and regarding his own dissatisfaction with Lot 49, he states its failure as
total. from conception to finish....

Yes, the Crying of Lot 49---a short story marketed as a novel is a critical
and sales success BUT......not really until the paperback,, which I read
somewhere once sold some strong multiple of
its hardcover ...much more than most for a non-blockbuster....it never hit
the bestseller list in hardcover which was real and well-measured then....
his audience was older serious readers and the young....read this fer sure
in a Nation or suchlike mag.....they didn't buy hardcovers in general
and,believe me, many book buyers would not
pay hardcover money for 'a short story marketed as a novel".I saw Roth's *The
Breast , *a short story published as a novel in Hardcover, not sell either
and he was more famous....
His growing reputation---some best reviewers and critics had now
established him---was palpable....

Part 2 to follow.....



On Tue, Jun 9, 2026 at 1:30 PM Robin Landseadel via Pynchon-l <
pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:

> A little loose talk about the promotion of Pynchon’s books, or what to do
> when the author is
> famous for being inaccessible, unavailable to the press, to photographers,
> for interviews,
> book tours, any of the usual means of juicing the machine to move units.
> And like it or not,
> the book business is a business.
>
> When V. came out in 1963, Pynchon quit his job as a technical writer for
> Boeing. I’ll hazard
> a guess he didn’t like the karma of the job. Pynchon then tries to get a
> job at U.C. Berkeley
> teaching math, gets turned down. I can’t say that Pynchon wrote The Crying
> of Lot 49 out of
> desperation, but it looks like for the first and last time Pynchon had to
> meet a deadline and
> later regretted what came out. Which is weird, because some of those
> things the author
> regards as flaws can be seen as virtues, a bit like that Zen “first
> thought, best thought”
> thing, or “On the Road”. There’s a whole lot of “beat” aesthetics in this
> short novel and it
> turned out to be awfully prescient about LSD, it is so of its
> pre-apocalyptic moment
> between the beats and the hippies. In any case, the novella is published
> April 1966, is a
> critical and sales smash. This gives the author seven years to complete
> one of the three
> really big books he intends to write. Meanwhile, he scribes a lot of
> blurbs for other people’s
> books, I guess to maintain his presence on the literary scene without
> resorting to talk
> shows.
>
> Gravity’s Rainbow was a critical and sales smash, and then there was
> silence for 17 years,
> save 1984’s Slow Learner, a collection of his early short stories,
> interesting in particular for
> the self-effacing introduction. The next novel, Vineland, landed like a
> damp squib in 1990,
> reducing the potential future value of this hot literary property. Zoyd
> gives off the
> impression that Pynchon spent the rest of the 1970s and 1980s on the
> couch, watching
> Gilligan’s Island, a giant bag of cheezy puffs and a bong loaded with
> Trainwreck by his side.
> Vineland sold, but it disappointed folks looking for another epic
> doorstopper like Gravity’s
> Rainbow.
>
> When they got exactly that with Mason & Dixon the critics were in ecstasy,
> but the buying
> public stayed away in droves, and with good reason. Yes, M & D has
> Pynchon’s best
> characters and character development, plenty of madcap scenes and weird
> inventions, is
> arguably his best novel, but I’m going to guess the faux 18th century
> variations on modern
> language and the sheer density and obscurity of the text pushed readers
> away, leading to
> stacks of remaindered books on the ½ off tables of the big-box bookstores.
> Not a good
> look. Something had to be done, there had to be some sort of game plan to
> keep Pynchon
> saleable and culturally relevant. If you aren’t going to have a book tour
> but you need to stay
> in the general public’s face, what do you do? What can you do?
>
> Which brings us to the three episodes of the Simpsons where Pynchon
> “appeared” in
> cartoon form with a bag over his head.
>
> The first, “Diatribe of a Mad Housewife”, is one of those Christian tales
> of redemption that
> Friend Tom alludes to. Marge’s book is part Moby Dick, part bodice ripping
> Romance, just
> the sort of property destined to go straight to a mass-market spinner in
> your local Target.
>
> “Diatribe of a Mad Housewife” first aired January 4, 2004:
>
> . . . Marge creates the characters for her novel: Temperance,
> the dutiful lady, inspired by herself; Temperance's loving
> whaler husband, inspired by Homer; and Cyrus Manly,
> inspired Ned Flanders. At first, she has Homer as a
> successful whale hunter, but after he comes home, tired,
> clearly not listening to her and starts rattling off what he
> wants her to make for dinner with no regard for her, Marge
> decides to rewrite him into a lazy, selfish, ugly drunk fisher
> named Captain Mordecai who has no luck. She completes
> the book, titled “The Harpooned Heart”. She gets positive
> reviews and decides to get it published. Before doing so
> Marge asks Homer to read her book just to see if he has
> any problems with the characters, but he falls asleep while
> attempting to do so. He later lies and says he loves the book.
> Marge becomes an instant success, with praise from Tom
> Clancy and Thomas Pynchon:
>
> https://youtu.be/_a2wzm2O1nk?si=0GOb_t7DYkhn-Bax
>
> The reason Friend Tom, whoever he might be, wrote of the “Christian
> message” of this
> episode comes from the episode’s dramatic peak: “The Harpooned Heart” has
> Cyrus
> Manly (Ned Flanders) and Captain Mordecai (Homer Simpson) in epic battle,
> with Mordecai
> harpooning (is that a word?) Manly’s heart. The harpoon is tied to thick
> rope, Manly falls off
> a cliff onto a whale, the rope winds its way around Mordecai’s ankle,
> Mordecai also winds
> up on the whale, everybody dies, everybody’s sad, end of Marge’s novel,
> fade out.
>
> In real life Homer asks Ned for forgiveness and hopes Ned can make him a
> better man.
>
> It’s a bit like the equally dense Hicks McTaggart realizing he doesn’t
> have to be a mindless
> goon for the rest of his life in spite of his reflexes, that he has
> potential for grace. Grace is a
> vital term in Pynchon’s writings. And somebody who wrote the episode must
> have read
> some Pynchon:
>
>
> Homer and Marge then choose to write their own novel:
> “Who Really Killed J.F.K.”, with Homer's theory being that
> Lee Harvey Oswald wanted to steal the Jack Ruby, but
> then refutes his own idea when Marge tells him that Jack
> Ruby was a man, not a jewel.
>
> Too bad Charles Hollander didn’t write an essay about that.
>
> Diatribe of a Mad Housewife | Simpsons Wiki | Fandom
> https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/Diatribe_of_a_Mad_Housewife
>
> The second, “All’s Fair in Oven War” first aired on November 14, 2004.
> This is notable for
> Pynchon reportedly refusing to say anything negative about Homer as he
> considers Homer
> his role model. Which actually makes sense.
>
> The third, a non-speaking role, had him appear at on the November 19, 2006
> episode,
> “Moe'N'a Lisa”, at a roundtable discussion featuring famous authors with
> speaking roles.
> Sorry, can’t find a link with a screen grab of the writers’ conference.
> Weird, wonder if “they”
> know something “we” don’t.
>
> Meanwhile, Thomas Pynchon gets talked into writing the intro for “The
> Daily Show: Ten
> Fu@#ing Years (The Concert),16 November 2006, New York City”:
>
> Uncollected Pynchon: Evolution of "The Daily Show" – Shipwreck
> LibraryShipwreck Library
> https://shipwrecklibrary.com/the-modern-word/pynchon/sl-essays-dailyshow/
>
> It a lot to do with the sort of wrangling that goes on at script meetings
> and the complex
> ecosystem of movie promotions:
>
> . . . Well. Talk about dilemmas! Script development sessions
> became notable for long and gloomy silences, until one day,
> down at the far end of some all-but-forgotten conference
> table, a screenwriter, just back from a weekend seminar in
> Canoga Park entitled “Disrespect—Make It Work For You,”
> tentatively raised his hand. . .
>
> Interesting timing: “Against the Day” gets published on November 21, 2006.
> The critical
> response to “Against the Day” runs from elated to profoundly confused. If
> you need a book
> to stun an Ox, here’s your ticket, 1085 pages running the full-spectrum
> gamut from
> damnation in the fiery bowels of the earth to a gentle embrace of the
> skies. Naturally us
> poor plebes found the result mystifyin’ and sales languished as much as
> Mason & Dixon’s,
> resulting in the book frequently finding itself on remaindered tables
> alongside equally
> untouched copies of Mason & Dixon.
>
> I’ve got this lovely volunteer job at the local library. We get donated
> books, CDs, DVDs,
> comix. I’ve been there for a few years, a lot of books have passed through
> my hands. So far,
> we’ve received a QP of V., two mass-market paperbacks of CoL49. I bought
> both of those
> and gave both away, doing my part for w.a.s.t.e. after all these years,
> these being early
> copies with Oedipa frugging to the Paranoids on the cover. Also, one
> slightly damaged QP
> of Gravity’s Rainbow, none I can recall of Vineland, two of Mason and
> Dixon with the really
> clean copy now in my possession, two of Against the Day with one,
> immaculate, now in my
> possession, one NM copy of Inherent Vice, now mine, and none of Bleeding
> Edge.
> It’s easier to find first edition copies of M & D and AtD than any other
> books by Pynchon.
> When he delivered what the critics and fans seemed to want, they decided
> they weren’t all
> that interested anymore. Probably had something to do with the author, now
> in his 60s and
> 70s, being a mellower dude than the 30-something scuffling author filled
> with rage against
> the machine. Makes a difference. Hell of a lot more “Dad jokes” in AtD,
> for one.
>
> The next novel, Inherent Vice, published August 4, 2009, had more
> extensive use of
> Pynchon’s voice in the promotional video for Penguin Books:
>
> https://youtu.be/RjWKPdDk0_U?si=WQzKwYfn0TOYbs3K
>
> I suspect that the author is responsible for the “pink spray” joke on the
> dust jacket of
> Inherent Vice, saving the distributors the trouble of marking up
> remaindered copies.
> Inherent Vice gets my vote for the most genial and accessible novel of
> Pynchon’s career,
> giving us clues about the author’s local environment when he was writing
> Gravity’s
> Rainbow as the sixties flamed out. Pynchon’s voice-over in the video has
> him performing
> the role of the novel’s protagonist, Doc Sportello, as Rip van Winkle, a
> somewhat
> anachronistic P.I., akin to Eliot Gould’s Philip Marlowe in Robert
> Altman’s version of the
> Long Goodbye.
>
> “$27.95? really? That used to be, like, three weeks of groceries, man . .
> . “
>
> Can you say “The Big Lebowski?” I know you can!
>
> The sales data for Pynchon’s first three novels is available; they were
> certified best
> sellers. V. and “49” moved about three million units each, Gravity’s
> Rainbow twice that.
> There isn’t any sales data for anything afterwards. I don’t recall seeing
> either Bleeding Edge
> or Inherent Vice on a remaindered table, at least not yet.
>
> It’s hard to tell if this promotional video for Bleeding Edge is for real
> or a goof. Whatever it is,
> they clearly didn’t put much effort into it:
>
> Bleeding Edge book trailer | Videos & Movies on Vimeo
> https://vimeo.com/73716114?cjdata=MXxOfDB8WXww&utm_campaign=5250933&utm_source=affiliate&utm_channel=affiliate&cjevent=ac9c2ad663fe11f180b800890a1eba23&clickid=ac9c2ad663fe11f180b800890a1eba23
>
> However, the next bit of promotion consisted of a movie. Initially, I was
> slightly
> disappointed at Inherent Vice, the movie, because of elements from the
> book that wound
> up on the cutting room floor and additions that contradicted the
> protagonist’s turmoil at
> approaching 30. Pynchon himself would be 33 by the time 1970 rolled around
> and it sounds
> like he was a big Lew Alcindor fan—who can blame him? But in the movie,
> Doc and
> Shasta echo Bogie and Bacall, and I’m sure that explains why Joaquin
> Phoenix looks more
> like 40 on a bad day in this movie than a twenty-something dreading
> turning thirty. We get
> Doc and Shasta driving off together in at the end of the movie in a way
> that seems ironic
> instead of Doc driving alone in the fog. I figure that PTA could hear
> Doc’s voice in Phoenix.
>
> There’s plenty of stand-out cameos in the movie. My favorite is Martin
> Short, acting his ass
> off as libidinous Dr. Rudy Blatnoyd D.D.S. shoveling coke up his nose
> while unconvincingly
> explaining that the Golden Fang is some harmless business venture dentists
> set up for tax
> purposes.
>
> As if.
>
> Short is about as sketchy as a bag of blow cut with Bisquick bought in an
> underlit back alley
> from an Imperial stormtrooper. Good times. And once you adjust for the
> dropped plots—if
> everything in the book wound up on the screen we’d end up with something
> along the lines
> of the uncut “Greed” (1924)—the result is a very good variation on a theme
> by Raymond
> Chandler.
>
> In any case, I got the Blu-Ray, watched it an additional five times, like
> it more each time I
> see it. Fantastic ensemble acting.
>
> PTA’s Inherent Vice came out in 2014. The next move of the
> Pynchon-Media-Industrial
> Complex is the biggest. I seriously doubt it could have been planned to
> this extent, but One
> Battle After Another and Shadow Ticket arrived more or less together
> during a perfect storm
> of publicity, when the Trump admin and MAGA was about as vile as any
> Fascist movement
> in this country since, say, 1932.
>
> “Curious people want to know: mysterious, secretive 88 year-old author
> Thomas Pynchon
> is coming up with a new book—is he senile yet?”
>
> Paul Thomas Anderson works on a movie “Inspired” by Vineland. Appears to
> be a middle
> finger pointed at Trump but never invokes his name. At the same time, it
> embraces good old
> American family values along with a few recognizable skits from Vineland
> to appease the
> diehard fans. Shadow Ticket looks like Dashiell Hammett on laughing gas.
> OBAA winds up
> winning Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay at the
> 2026 Oscars. PTA
> gives OBA a shout-out, Sean Penn is a no-show. Then everybody goes to the
> nearest In-N-
> Out for their photo ops and burgers. Shadow Ticket winds up with mixed
> critical reactions,
> many folks disappointed in the extreme, a few think they hit the
> motherload (Yo!) but being
> that the story moves swiftly and the protagonist is relatable, sales are
> more than
> respectable which, if you’re 88 going on 89, has to mean something.
>
> I was worried my first edition copy might be wearing out, went to three
> local independent
> book stores looking for another copy, only one had a copy (1), they said
> they are going to
> replace it. It wasn’t until I got home that I noticed that it’s a third
> edition. I slipped the new
> jacket on the first edition and set it aside.
>
> Us venerable antiques love a good mystery, you know, it’s the one sector
> of the book biz
> that you can always depend on. Gail and I can’t get enough of those kinky
> Midsommer
> Murders, especially when they go all Hammer Horror on us. We live in a
> condominium
> complex for seniors, little houses situated among the pines in a lovely
> park, there’s a duck
> pond in the middle, we can see it from our window. There’s also a
> community center with a
> lending library. About 50% of the books in it are mysteries, about half of
> those are hardback
> copies, still in their dust jackets. The Lacey Library receives a constant
> flow of donated,
> fresh-looking hardback Mysteries with clean dust jackets, quite a few
> published within the year.
> In terms of the book biz, it’s the most monetizable genre.
>
> As Bugs Bunny once said, “It’s a living.”
>
> https://youtu.be/RgO4KApUVqk?si=Z1fwrhbGt7QL1fKm
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>