American Myth

WHAT'S FUNNY TO ME is how most New Yorkers don't realize what they have in Curtis Sliwa. A legitimate American folk hero, like Davy Crockett, Buffalo Bill, and Woody Guthrie. Someone from the people and of the people, about whom myriad tales have been told, some true, others maybe not. The Kris Kristofferson quote: "part fact, part fiction, a walking contradiction." He even survived a "hit" from the mob!

Missing from conversation about this year's New York City mayoral election is any appreciation for, or acknowledgement of, those who operate outside accepted channels. DIYers who color outside the lines. Uncredentialed, uncertified, unregulated. Yet this is where the authentic voice of America is always to be found, via those who've seen this society from every possible angle; upside down and sideways.

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In the literary realm, the authors who've interested me are those who wrote beneath or outside official channels, because that's where you'll find the raw unpolished reality of this madly chaotic country. Expat Robert McAlmon for instance, escaping from cowboy country into the Lost Generation of the 1920's. Aben Kandel, writing about the flood of immigrants into New York City in the early decades of the 20th century-- or writing about gamblers in early 1960's Las Vegas-- in-between crafting screenplays for low-budget direct-to-drive-ins monster movies. Or perhaps the rawest voice of them all, Erskine Caldwell, whose rough, often brutal, sometimes hilarious stories from the underclasses of the Deep South during the Great Depression were banned far and wide. Not just from libraries! These three men are definitely not in today's literary canon-- which is why people should read them. 

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In a true democracy, the nation's underclasses must get a voice of their own once in a while. Shouldn't they?

How Do We Know Thomas Pynchon Exists?

 A PYNCHON AUTHORSHIP CONTROVERSY

That's the problem with a reclusive novelist like Thomas Pynchon. He might be non-existent.

The writings may well be the product of an 1963-era IBM System 360 mainframe computer, or a Univac, supplemented today, for the most recent novel, by AI. How would we know to the contrary? 

Or more likely, produced by a committee at CIA Headquarters in Langley.

For "Thomas Pynchon," unlike for all other public figures, there've been no questions, no interviews, no author photos. For sixty years! No accountability. Insular elite literary people, our official intelligentsia-- the most gullible individuals on earth-- are accepting of everything. Change the history of American literature to wipe out or marginalize naturalists and populists? Sure, they'll buy it. A pretend author? Simplicity itself in comparison.

There's long been a Shakespeare Authorship Controversy, with contrarians questioning the evidence and insisting someone other than the man from Stratford wrote the poems and plays.

There are far more grounds for a Pynchon Authorship Controversy.

THE CHIEF CULPRIT

This book review appearing in the New York Times on April 21, 1963, put unknown writer Thomas Pynchon on the cultural map. The review was written by upper-class literary mandarin George Plimpton, known for his gags and practical jokes. A recent essay by Andrew Szanton calls Plimpton a "world-class mischief maker"-- but there was much more to old George than first met the eye. Plimpton's influential literary journal The Paris Review was founded with CIA monies and intended to alter the direction of American culture away from its populist roots. The publication wanted "non-drum beaters and non-axe-grinders," or so proclaimed the first issue. This, in 1953 at the peak of the Cold War, when Ivy League liberal intellectuals sought a middle path between populist radicalism and John Birch Society-style reaction. For those in the upper levels of American society, scions of privilege, much was at stake.

CONTEXT

The real hoax, the actual gag, was wiping out the possibility of truly political, radical, "from the people" writing, of a kind which could connect to the vast American public, and promoting instead a jokey substitute, whose difficult books, published under the name of a WASP blueblood, would appeal to the literary cognoscenti in New England and New York, addressing politics in a satirical fashion, unthreatening, with distinctive style. The ultimate in 1960's hip. Hilarity for one and all. The masses excluded of course.

THE FIRST NOVEL

The first "Thomas Pynchon" novel, curiously enough, V, is about the mystery of identity. The search for an identity. A review of the novel on May 15, 1963 in Time magazine, in the aftermath of Plimpton's, asked: "Who, finally, is V? . . . Who indeed?"

NOTE

I'm sure there's an actual legal Thomas Pynchon somewhere, paid a yearly stipend for the use of his name, though he's clearly not up to playing the role of great writer in public. Oh well. Never easy to pull off.

Meanwhile George Plimpton, wherever he is, enjoys eternal amusement.