PYNCHON IS BACK

a clip from a rare documentary on reclusive writer Thomas Pynchon

A screaming comes across the desk. It's happened before but there is nothing to compare to it now. The rumors circulating in weirdo literary cults are true: Pynchon is back. He has a new book. Voices echo the news and shoes clatter on cobblestones. Newsboys run, weaving through traffic, waving the extra edition, shouting, Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Publishers' Weekly confirms an August 16th release date for Inherent Vice:

"Part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon — private eye Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era as free love slips away and paranoia creeps in with the L.A. fog."

Oh, come on. What's the big deal? Another sad sack shut-in burning the midnight oil? Dime a dozen, you say. You don't see his books at the airport with shiny, embossed covers, so how good could he be? I've never heard him chatting with Terri Gross on Fresh Air. He's never shot the bull with Conan, with Dave, with Jay, with Jon...

A rare shot of P, many years ago

Nope, he wouldn't do that. Pynchon writes well-regarded award-winning books nobody reads. OK, a few people read them, but mostly trainspotters and writers and drifters and edge dwellers; most civilians catch a whiff of all that sulfur and the sickening sweet smell of burning leaves and steer clear. Pynchon doesn't care. He's holed up somewhere in Tangier or Mexico City, a recluse, a shut in, a genius. This guy makes Salinger look like a social butterfly. Our old friend Amy Hungerford sheds some light on this man of mystery, but first here is the opening of Inherent Vice:

"She came along the alley and up the back steps the way she always used to. Doc hadn't seen her for over a year. Nobody had. Back then it was always sandals, bottom half a flower-print bikini, faded Country Joe & the Fish t-shirt. Tonight she was all in flatland gear, hair a lot shorter than he remembered, looking just like she swore she'd never look."



Professor Hungerford teaches The American Novel Since 1945 (ENGL 291) at Yale. She's whip smart and looking for trouble. Gotta love her. Here she places Thomas Pynchon firmly in the context of the political upheaval of the 1960s, and argues that Pynchon "is deeply invested in questions of meaning and emotional response." The Crying of Lot 49 is "a sincere call for connection, and a lament for loss, as much as it is an ironic, playful puzzle."

For more Pynchon, check this previous post.

MYSTERY MAN REVEALED

Another rare photograph of the face that launched a thousand dissertations.

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr., born May 8, 1937, lived in Seattle for a couple years, living in the U District and writing technical manuals for Boeing. Later on he wrote some novels, including one of the archetypal texts of post-modern fiction, "Gravity's Rainbow."
The dense, interwoven story takes place in London and Europe immediately following VE Day at the end of World War II, but reducing the complex narrative to a simple paragraph is a fool's errand. Suffice it to say conspiracy, entropy, prescience, militarism, obsession, bawdy humor, bad jokes, and the development of the V-1 rocket all figure prominantly against a backdrop of Pynchon's wide-ranging knowledge of science and technology, history, psychology, music, film, and literature. It's a doozy, by gum.
I've read it -- some parts a dozen times -- and have several dog-eared, underlined copies around the house, but I don't claim to understand it entirely. Passages are undeniably brilliant, but it's impossible to keep track of the mountain of information, the cast of characters, and all the scientific references without some help. Fortunately, Pynchon has fueled an obsessive army of scholarly monks devoted to his writing, and there are numerous critical works and concordances that help guide the novice. Some are listed below.
Is it all just a big put-on? A needlessly opaque virtuoso performance? Too bad you can't ask the man himself, but Pynchon makes J.D. Salinger look like a social butterfly. In this age of celebrity, he grants no interviews. He's never photographed. No one knows where he lives. In fact, when "Gravity's Rainbow" won the National Book Award in 1974, he sent the double-talking nutty professor Irwin Corey to give the acceptance speech, prompting some to wonder if the comic was actually Thomas Pynchon.
Years later, when the actor John Larroquette was planning to have a fictitious meeting with the reclusive writer on his sit-com, he was contacted by the man -- via Pynchon's agent, of course. Pynchon suggested he be described as wearing a Roky Erickson T-shirt. (see Roky Erikson below)

For more information on Pynchon, here are some good links:

http://www.themodernword.com/gr/
http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/
http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/
http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/10.01.98/cover/lit-pynchon-9839.html