The Letters of Wanda Tinasky

by Steven Moore (Foreword), Fred Sternkopf (Illustrator), Bruce Anderson (Introduction)

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.

224 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1996

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Steven Moore is a literary critic. He received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 1988.

While Moore has been a teacher, bookstore owner, book reviewer, and columnist, he is most well known for his work as an editor and author of literary criticism. Moore is the foremost authority on William Gaddis, having written a book on this author, supervised the collection of several critical essays, and assisted in the translation of Gaddis' work into Chinese.

The wikipedia entry.

Reviews

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

Is this required reading for Pynchon Completionista?

[Steve]

No...Thomas Pynchon was not Wanda Tinasky.

[Nog]

For a while, it was purported that none other than Thomas Pynchon had been writing these letters to the Boonville newspaper, roughly in the time frame that it was speculated that Mr. P was living in Mendocino county writing "Vineland." The author is supposedly a bag lady living in Fort Bragg.

As it turns out, it was somebody else (check out Wikipedia), but these letters are at times pretty entertaining. Sadly, the reputed author of the letters (an obscure Beat poet) killed his wife and then himself. Since I had some friends living in Mendocino in the late 70's, early 80's and visited them often, I can tell you that these letters capture the zeitgeist of the area during that time pretty well (as does "Vineland"!). A collection destined for obscurity, I imagine. 2 and 1/2 stars.

[Al Maki]

Let's start with the assumption that these letters were in fact written by Thomas Pynchon and not by a bag lady who happened to live in the same part of Northern California at the same time. Most letters don't age well and many of these have not They require extensive footnotes to make sense to a reader who wasn't in Mendocino County in the early eighties, and very few of us were. At the same time Pynchon is America's Gogol and there are some delights in here. There's a poem describing the sinking of Pequod from Starbuck's point of view that astonished me when I first read it and still does. And there's this celebration of fall on the west coast:
"Loveliest of trees, persimmon, now
With fruit & leaf matched on the bough
Stands out against the autumn green
Nearing orange for Hallowe'en
Since of my three score years & ten
Not one is coming back again
Through Mendocino I will caper
To see trees hung with toilet paper."
Who but Pynchon would use ampersands in a poem?

[Niall]

My intro to Pynchon (I guess?) definitely has inspired me to start tackling his novels soon as his subtle sense of humour blended with his pretty searing commentary seems enticing.