Proverbs for Paranoids revisited

Proverbs for Paranoids: Pursuing Pynchon

Ask most people which author has earned the title "Most Reclusive" and the answer will invariably be J.D. Salinger. I attribute this to his popularity, for if you were truly interested in lifestyles of the shy and reclusive, Pynchon's seclusion is infinitely more interesting.

With the publication of his first novel, V, in 1963 Pynchon went underground and has been seen only rarely since.

Part of what makes Pynchon's penchant for anonymity so attractive is his literature, which not only features paranoia as a dominant theme, but is capable of recreating the experience in the reader. Anyone who has read The Crying of Lot 49 knows that he or she will never enter a post office with the same perspective again.

Combine this literary theme with the sort of personality that enjoys reading Pynchon, and you get a virtual telephone game surrounding the author's reticence. Rumors swirl - someone claims to have toked with Tom, another claims Pynchon wrote Gravity's Rainbow while stoned.

Asterisk's prank with Hunter S. Thompson fans has its forerunner in Wanda Tinasky. When letters began appearing in a tiny northern California newspaper, the style and timing were attributed to Pynchon, who was rumored to be in the area at the time, working on Vineland.

Again it was literary sleuth extraordinaire Don Foster who brought the truth to light. Writing in Author Unknown, the same book in which he made the case for Henry Livingston Jr. as the author of "The Night Before Christmas," Foster concluded that Tinasky was a murderous beatnik, not the reclusive author.

The most recent and reliable Pynchon sighting occurred in 1998, when a reporter named James Bone snapped the author picking up his son from school.

Frankly, I don't buy Bone's bullsh*t rationalizations for taking the photo. I won't even go into the remarks about Pynchon plundering the graves of the defenseless dead - Mr. Bone apparently forgot Pynchon writes fiction. An author that has chosen anonymity is a much different type of public figure, letting readers enjoy creations without the filter of omnipresent celebrity. A picture of Pynchon picking up his son from school tells us nothing about how or why he writes, his professional habits, what creative process from which he pulls inspirations. Note that Bone makes no mention of how Pynchon's son reacts to his father's obvious distress, to the confrontation with a stranger on the street. Such details would likely cast Mr. Bone in the same ghoulish spotlight inhabited by Beatrice Sparks.

Thomas Pynchon's privacy is his own to dispose of at will. That should be respected in as much as it is representative of a right inherent to us all. Beyond that consideration, however, I have an appreciation that I believe others share for the mystery behind the fiction. Like the Poe Toaster, such a mystery only deepens appreciation of the works that come out of it. Each one approaches like cannonshot above a river; it is out of respect for the living, as much as the dead, that we must wait patiently for the river to give up the body.

Postscript:

If anyone ever hears of Bone in Baltimore on January 19, make every effort to insure he is suitably restrained. He is obviously not to be trusted in the presence of a good mystery.

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(pictured above) One of the few extant Pynchon pics.