Thomas Pynchon fans must be pleased: Mason & Dixon, the author's latest novel, is hitting bookshelves this weekend. But what some of them aren't as pleased about is that Lineland, a book about flame wars on the Pynchon-L mailing list, will join it five weeks later.
Lineland "is a combination of [Pynchon's] fondest dream and worst nightmare," says editor Jules Siegel, a writer whose claim to fame is having known the reclusive Pynchon in college, and whose memoir about the friendship became a classic to Pynchon fans.
Pynchon, the acclaimed writer of Gravity's Rainbow and Vineland, has managed to evade interviews and photos all his life. So when Siegel and his ex-wife, Chrissie Wexler, who claims to have had an affair with Pynchon, joined the Pynchon-L mailing list last October, academics and literary fans flooded them with questions about the author's past. The ensuing flame war spawned Lineland, a testament to the mythos surrounding Pynchon's name and the fracas that resulted from popping that bubble.
"They had a vision of him as a mix of Burroughs and Kerouac. He's not that, he's a very academically trained novelist," says Siegel. "They felt kinda punctured to see someone who they thought of as a cult figure as just a regular guy."
The discussion soon turned to whether Siegel was dishonoring Pynchon's desire for solitude and privacy. Fans wondered if he was trying to smear Pynchon as revenge for his wife's affair, and why he was spending so much time talking about a friend from 30 years ago.
"Some of us thought that the list might fold because of the huge (and I mean huge) flame war that erupted," writes Christine Karatnytsky, a Pynchon-L member who believes that Pynchon's desire for privacy should be respected.
Siegel began turning the 300,000 word exchange into a book when he realized the fortuitous timing of the upcoming Pynchon novel. The book will include photographs and illustrations of Pynchon drawn by Wexler, as well as drawings by R. Crumb.
Not everyone on the list - and in outside literary circles - is pleased about Lineland's publication. "If a writer wants his privacy, it doesn't seem to be anyone's business but his own," says John Leonard, literary editor at The Nation and longtime Pynchon reviewer. "You can't tell anyone what to write about, but I think it feels grubby."
