{"id":70983,"date":"2014-05-08T15:07:42","date_gmt":"2014-05-08T19:07:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=70983"},"modified":"2019-02-04T12:15:57","modified_gmt":"2019-02-04T17:15:57","slug":"watch-the-greta-garbo-of-american-letters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/08\/watch-the-greta-garbo-of-american-letters\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch: The Greta Garbo of American Letters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is Thomas Pynchon\u2019s birthday. His fans have also declared it Pynchon in Public Day<\/a>, a social-media tribute with a modest concept: take to the streets with your camera and post photos of \u201chorns, W.A.S.T.E. insignia, [and] the novels of Thomas Pynchon read unashamedly on trains, while still sub-rosa. It is simple, it is inevitable, it has begun.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so it has<\/a>: Twitter teems with shadowy portraits of those Awaiting Silent Trystero\u2019s Empire. If you\u2019re not about to draw a muted post-horn in a public restroom, you can celebrate Pynchon in Public Day by revisiting this CNN report from 1997<\/a>, when, upon the release of Mason & Dixon<\/em>, the cable-news pooh-bahs determined to track him down\u2014his privacy was simply too inscrutable to ignore. Being CNN, they found him, but he prevailed upon them to refrain from identifying him on camera; he appeared as one among the crowds of New York. <\/p>\n