Dear Pynchon listserve: NP but quite Pynchon-adjacent

[Robert Mahnke]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ThomasPynchon/comments/1rigp2u/letter_from_thomas_pynchon_to_l%C3%A0slo_krasznahorkai/#lightbox
From the ThomasPynchon community on Reddit: Letter from Thomas Pynchon to Làslo Krasznahorkai
reddit.com


Hello, Laszlo, 

Wonderful news about the Man Booker prize! Tok job! I heard the audio of your acceptance— thanks for including me in your list— an honor.

[redacted]

In between acts of futility I actually did get to read The Melancholy of Resistance, which reminded me of why I read novels in the first place— it was like living for awhile  in someplace I needed to be. Thank you. I am sort of into Satantango now though it will not, I think, be a quick read.

Congratulations also on the Cullman Fellowship. There are certainly worse places to work than New York. So I’m told. Anyhow, I look forward to seeing you again.

Be well,

[redacted]

Tom

[Sorry, I’m not rendering some of the diacritical marks correctly.]


> On Mar 5, 2026, at 9:03 AM, Corbeau Castrum via Pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:
> 
> I have blocked reddit on all my devices (too addictive). Can anyone post it here?
> 
> 
> 
> -------- Original Message --------
> On Thursday, 03/05/26 at 16:03 rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> this is quite good in a similar vein
> 
> https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/sep/03/sunset-review-laszlo-nemes
> 
> a great director is Nemes
> he is reportedly directing a version of McCarthy's Outer Dark (o boy) and a
> film on resistance leader Jean Moulin (o boy)
> 
> and I figure u guys have seen Pynchon's letter to lazlo krasznahorkai
> recently posted on Reddit?
> 
> rich
> 
> On Thu, Mar 5, 2026 at 6:07 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> A possibly great movie called *My Twentieth Century *
>> was chosen by the local Film Society I
>> am part of. A 1989 Hungarian movie by another of the brilliant
>> women making art and movies in our time. The female gaze, not the male.
>> Look it up. Consider watching it if you haven't or watching it again.
>> 
>> So, this viewing--I had seen it when released in a shallow
>> appreciative way--
>> because of immersion in Pynchon's vision and  on modernity and
>> and modernism since,  I saw it deeper, I think.
>> 
>> Major themes of this movie align with many of Pynchon's. Simplistically,
>> light
>> and electricity in themselves and as a synecdoche for the invasion of
>> technology
>> into the twentieth century. And a copy of Kropkin's* Mutual Aid* --I am
>> giving a local lecture on this concept and history and aliveness in our
>> world in the fall--plays a major role--
>> Kropotkin's self-organizing 'anarchism' is one of P's constant, hidden
>> themes and
>> the plot involves two twin sisters who take different paths in life, one
>> becoming a
>> bomb-carrying anarchist---but no spoilers about how or whether--so the
>> theme
>> of violence or not for social change is also major....
>> 
>> I think this movie, set mostly in Budapest, may have been part of the
>> influence 'soil', so to speak,
>> of* Shadow Ticket* which ends in Hungary, as we know...
>> --
>> 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