that is reportedly the size of Thomas Pynchon’s archive, which was recently acquired by the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. this news comes to my attention less than 24 hours after I discussed with my therapist my habit of putting off finishing, or even starting, work on a writing project because I think I need to do more research, or learn Greek, or brush up on the classics: things I think I need to be able to write at the level I believe myself capable of. “I want to be Dante, I want to be Rabelais,” I told my therapist, two examples of highly erudite writers whose work I’ve only read a fraction of.
there were a few times in session I felt sheepish, as though a light were being shined on me while I had my dick in my hand. it’s sort of astonishing how many deflection plays I have, and how often they work, and how disarmed I feel when someone won’t fall for my feints. a good therapist relationship should feel at least a little antagonistic. not that it’s your business what exactly made me feel that way.
it’s easy to compare myself to Pynchon regarding research, even without his archive being so quantified. less easy, due to his secrecy, to compare myself on his dealings with the sordid business of publishing, which I am realizing is much more of a block to me than anything else. even here, now, writing this, I feel like I’m failing, like I shouldn’t be open about my ambitions, I shouldn’t talk about myself at all, it’s more noble to quietly work and leave the business of posterity to fate. but I wrote a 4000 word newsletter, put a lot of effort into it, and a few dozen people read it. thank you if you did, but it’s not enough for me. if someone denies being hungry it does not leave them satiated. and yet I still feel it “beneath” me to put the effort into submitting for publication, into (groan) networking, into promoting what I work really hard on. as though hugely successful literary author Thomas Pynchon didn’t “play the game” at least to some extent.
anyway I’m reading John Berryman’s Dream Songs right now and readjusting my ambitions away from “be Pynchon” towards “write continuously and get things into peoples hands, whatever it takes.”
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