The letters of Wanda Tinasky [Paperback]

TR Factor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1996

In the mid-80s, when Thomas Pynchon was in Northern California writing "Vineland" and parts of "Mason & Dixon," scores of letters-to-the-editor appeared in the Mendocino County press signed "Wanda Tinasky." Nearly all the letters were addressed to Bruce Anderson, editor and publisher of the Anderson Valley Advertiser, whom Wanda described as "...an old-fashioned masochistic horsewhippable editor..." Wanda's letters were funny, highly and wittily referenced, and controversial; after five and a half years, Wanda disappeared as enigmatically as she had arrived, with no one discovering her identity. Was Thomas Pynchon Wanda Tinasky? There is a rather large body of educators, scholars and other Pynchonophiles who believe that she may very well have been he. This book does not set out to prove anything. What it does do is give the reader plenty to ponder in the remarkable numbers of coincidences between Tinasky and Pynchon. There are nearly 500 annotations to the letters: clues abound. The second half of the book consists of other letter-writers during that period, several of whom Wanda crossed swords with, and editorials/articles by Anderson: an inside look at life in Mendocino County, California.

Editorial Reviews

Review

(Ed. note: More than 120 letters written between 1963 and 1984 by Thomas Pynchon to his then-agent, Candida Donadio, recently surfaced with the suddenness of a breaching whale only to submerge again as quickly, not to be seen again until they are sadly posthumous.) More mysterious (than the Pynchon/Donadio letters), to Pynchon scholars at any rate, are a bushel of letters sent in the mid-1980s to the Anderson Valley Advertiser, a small, hell-raising Northern California newspaper, by a woman named Wanda Tinasky. These cranky and wildly cerebral letters are believed by many to be Pynchon's own work. (He was almost certainly living in Northern California at the same time, laboring on his 1990 novel "Vineland.") According to Scott McLemee's 1995 piece about the Tinasky letters in Lingua Franca, it wasn't until a selection of these letters was about to go to press that Pynchon, through his agent, finally denied authorship. Many in the Pynchon community, however, continue to believe that the Tinasky letters do indeed bear Pynchon's idiosyncratic stamp. -- Dwight Garner

By now youve heard the story. A small weekly paper, the Anderson Valley Advertiser of Boonville, California, receives, between 1983 and 1988, dozens of letters from one Wanda Tinasky, bag lady. The letters are intelligent, full of high- and pop-cultural references, sometimes witty, sometimes vulgar, but always funny, suffused with antiauthoritarian politics, and stylistically out of this world... Wildly unstructured in form, they offer Wandas take on pop culture (shes a big fan of Cagney and Lacey), the literary scene (she claims William Gaddis and Thomas Pynchon are the same person), journalism (she campaigns for Anderson to win a Pulitzer Prize), politics local and national (she has a fondness for the old New Left and attacks all ideologies of control), and all other subjects great and small. Her style combines a stand-up comics delivery with easily handled encyclopedic knowledge. (Thats what makes me think shes Pynchon: like him, she seems to know everything.) -- Robert L. McLaughlin, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Fall 1996

The book not only reprints all the Wanda letters, but accompanies them with a smart and extensive annotated guide to all the arcane literary and local references in them... which makes the book as a whole more than merely an "Is She or Isn't She Pynchon?" debate, but a funny, literate, weirdly touching portrait of an unusual community obsessed by a literary mystery, a shadowy Visitation--in a way, a literary ghost story. But if it's a ghost story, was the specter Thomas Pynchon? Or a remarkably sophisticated but reclusive writer with a Pynchonesque range of allusion and interest, a Pynchonesque feel for the arcana of High and Low culture, a Pynchonesque fondness for ampersands, someone who deployed unmistakably Pynchonesque clues (like "Wanda's" claim to have worked for Boeing Aircraft) who happened to be writing in the Emerald Triangle in the period Mr. Pynchon was living there--but who was not Mr. Pynchon. I find myself unable to make up my mind, but I'm fascinated with Wanda, whoever she or he is. If she isn't Mr. Pynchon, she's still a wonderfully engaging voice whose prose gives, at the very least, some of the surface pleasures of Mr. Pynchon's, and occasionally some of the deeper ones. So I think what I'm going to do is enumerate some of the most Pynchonian passages in Wanda's letters, some of the most Pynchonian clues, for your consideration. Not so much to prove Wanda is Mr. Pynchon, but to explain why I like Wanda, whoever she is. To explore what we talk about when we talk about the "Pynchonesque". -- New York Observer 4/28/97

From the Author

This should be titled "Prodcomments" because I produced this book, not authored it. The identity of the author of The Letters of Wanda Tinasky has not yet been revealed. Is it is or is it ain't Thomas Pynchon? Stay tuned. Meanwhile, in the Preface I wrote, "Much of Pynchon's stuff is built around paranoia, among the symptoms of which is the feeling of being followed by someone and you don't know who it is. In this case (tracking down clues to annotate), I... had narapoia, the feeling that it was I who was following someone and I didn't know who it was. I still don't. But I know Wanda Tinasky and I've learned a lot about Thomas Pynchon. The range of references is staggering, but I've been assured by an academic that any competent writer could have used them. Sure. Any competent writer with an amazing array of literary references spanning several centuries tossed off like salt over the shoulder, an extraordinarily quick mind and comic wit, a knowledgable interest in films and tv, able to write in parallels to Pynchon works, conversant in French and German and able to make puns in each, mocks the Pulitzer Prize with the glib disdain of one who was pusillanimously denied one, and shows a genuine affection for the people he writes to and about." Several times Wanda referred to a novel she/he was working on; the novel was certainly Vineland. Wanda began signing letters, "Yr. Ob'd'nt Servant, &c.,&c., Wanda Tinasky" in the style of the 18th century, the time of Mason & Dixon. And Wanda was very fond of ampersands.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Vers Libre Press; 1st edition (May 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0965288102
• ISBN-13: 978-0965288101
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #543,417 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars desperate attribution, August 2, 2001

By 

david janes (london United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The letters of Wanda Tinasky (Paperback)

Following reading Don Foster's Author Unknown, In Search of Anonymous & also being a Pynchon reader, I was intrigued to see the original letters & have a look at what caused the rumours. The A4 format of the book & cheap paper are a poor start. So too are the cloying sketches of a derelict with a shopping cart full of Pynchon's books. And the typeface is horrible too. It is clear from the way the book looks and feels that we are dealing with amateurs. The footnotes by TR Factor when not stating the obvious, are striking by their ignorance. Also the tone of desperation, citing the briefest moments in the letters and somehow correlating these to obscure & passing references in Pynchon's fiction, is absurd. However, if one can ignore all this and get to the meat of the text, you are left with the fine writing of a man with a mission to annoy & highlight the foolishness of Mendocino county residents such as the abominable Factor. I am retyping the text of the letters and trashing the book.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Tinasky v. Pynchon, January 13, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The letters of Wanda Tinasky (Paperback)

Despite Ms. Factor's disparaging review of Don Foster's literary detective work, I highly recommend his book "Author Unknown," which methodically explains why "Wanda Tinasky" could not be Pynchon.

3 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Tinasky V. Pynchon, April 5, 2000

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The letters of Wanda Tinasky (Paperback)

Yes, this book of letters has many literary and pop culture references but if Thomas Pynchon has denied authorship of these letters then shouldn't Pynchon devotees just accept that there is no ghost to be found here? Enjoy Mason & Dixon and his other fine novels and let Wanda enjoy her fifteen minutes.