ST ch 37 Business Plot

[Mark Kohut]

"threw' is a loaded word and in this use is surely pejorative.....we know
this "short story marketed as a novel" was published
in two parts in two different magazines....magazines that paid good money,
which TRP needed....ESQUIRE needs no proof of paying well,
but that skin mag *Cavalier*, the wider pussy-spreading
with wilder-seeming less bourgeois women---every Playgirl spoke a number of
languages, you will remember, and probably played piano,was trying to
increase its circulation by paying real writers closer to what Playboy was
then...(I'd like to know if Playboy turned down this story?)....

Which to me confirms what we know about TRP from his own words....He wrote
and rewrote and hunted every tendril to its root  until he was
satisfied......it seems what Candida did was convince Tom and Lippincott to
take it as the novel he owed them  so he could move on....Tom in 1984 stil
thought it was only a
short story.....

On Mon, May 11, 2026 at 5:56 PM rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:

> this tidbit came along recently about Lot49. if u haven't seen
>
> McGrath touches on career management when she explains that Thomas Pynchon
> “threw [*The Crying of Lot 49*] together on the advice of his agent,
> Candida Donadio, to fulfill his contract with Lippincott and follow his
> editor to Viking.
>
>
> https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/middlemen-literary-agents-american-publishing-industry-laura-mcgrath/
>
> On Mon, May 11, 2026 at 2:39 PM Robin Landseadel via Pynchon-l <
> pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:
>
>> Which is why I haven't bought into the notion that the JFK assassination
>> is the lynchpin of CoL 49. I can see the CIA, I can see Operation
>> Paperclip, I can see MKULTRA. Those are subjects the author was researching
>> for the Big Book, the one where he's gonna go to the toppermost of the
>> poppermost, or at least the literary equivalent of same. I can see all of
>> those in Gravity's Rainbow, but in much more depth.
>>
>> I also see the Peter Pinguin society which I take is something of a
>> parody of the John Birch Society. I also take that the Nefastis machine is
>> most likely pointing to Scientology. The Courier's Tragedy takes a stab at
>> the Jacobean revenge play. There's lots of targets the author takes aim at,
>> he's known as a satirist, right? It's 1964, it's California, plenty to
>> satirize.
>>
>> You want a book about the JFK assassination? try Don DeLillo's Libra.
>>
>> On 05/11/2026 8:57 AM PDT Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> He surely knew the conspiracy theories of JFK’s death (1 which is why he
>> picked none and 2)  which is why he also made fun —satiric fun—in all his
>> books of conspiracy theories.
>>
>> On Mon, May 11, 2026 at 11:43 AM Corbeau Castrum via Pynchon-l <
>> pynchon-l at waste.org mailto:pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:
>>
>> How dangerous would it have been for Pynchon to suggest or imply the CIA
>> had a hand (that of the conductor) in JFK's assassination? Was it not
>> widely suspected and discussed? Or was it his prominence as the next big
>> thing in American writing that put him in (perceived) danger? How would he
>> have known if it was not common knowledge?
>>
>> I think the scene in GR when Slothrop discovers FDR is dead works pretty
>> well as a stand-in for Kennedy too.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>
>