The Review of Contemporary Fiction

The Letters of Wanda Tinasky ed. by TR Factor
Robert L. McLaughlin

TR Factor, ed. The Letters of Wanda Tinasky. Introduction by Bruce Anderson. Foreword by Steven Moore. Vers Libre Press (P.O. Box 2911, Portland, OR 97208-2911), 1996. xviii + 224 pp. Paper: $25.00.

By now you’ve heard the story. A small weekly paper, the Anderson ValleyAdvertiser 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. After Vineland is published in 1990, AVA editor Bruce Anderson realizes that the letters must have been written by Thomas Pynchon, who reportedly lived in Mendocino County while writing Vineland. One year ago RCF reviewed Anderson’s forthcoming edition of these letters, prematurely as it turned out, since that edition, for a variety of reasons, did not appear. But now The Letters of Wanda Tinasky is back (available only via mail order to the address above) in a new and, I think, improved version.

The letters are preceded by context-providing introductory essays by Bruce Anderson, collection editor TR Factor, and former RCF senior editor Steven Moore. They all use hedge-your-bets language, probably to forestall cease-and-desist orders, but they don’t hide that they’re all convinced Wanda is Pynchon. The letters are followed by a generous selection of non-Wanda material from AVA: some of Anderson’s editorials and a sampling of letters from others, some of which Wanda had responded to. This material is interesting both for the picture it presents of northern California life—and the tempests in a small-town teapot Wanda could stir up—and for the admiration it inspires for Anderson’s progressive politics.

But the Wanda letters are the reason to get this book. Wildly unstructured in form, they offer Wanda’s take on pop culture (she’s 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 comic’s delivery with easily handled encyclopedic knowledge. (That’s what makes me think she’s Pynchon: like him, she seems to know everything.) My favorite moments are a poem Wanda submits to establish her credentials for criticizing locally admired artistes (a poem that silences the chatter of the offended artistic community) and her explanation of the Gospels’ assertion that “the poor you always have with you” (“If you read your Bible thoughtfully, it’s not hard to distinguish between what Jesus really said and what the guys running the rackets put into his mouth after he was dead”).

Pynchon fanatics, like me, will be interested in these letters because they might be—despite his protestations—by the mysterious one. But you don’t have to know Pynchon to love Wanda: her style and vision take us through the looking glass to give us a topsy-turvy look at our times. [Robert L. McLaughlin]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction The Letters of Wanda Tinasky ed. by TR Factor Robert L. McLaughlin TR Factor, ed. The Letters of Wanda Tinasky. Introduction by Bruce Anderson. Foreword by Steven Moore. Vers Libre Press (P.O. Box 2911, Portland, OR 97208-2911), 1996. xviii + 224 pp. Paper: $25.00. By now you’ve heard the story. A small weekly paper, the Anderson ValleyAdvertiser 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. After Vineland is published in 1990, AVA editor Bruce Anderson realizes that the letters must have been written by Thomas Pynchon, who reportedly lived in Mendocino County while writing Vineland. One year ago RCF reviewed Anderson’s forthcoming edition of these letters, prematurely as it turned out, since that edition, for a variety of reasons, did not appear. But now The Letters of Wanda Tinasky is back (available only via mail order to the address above) in a new and, I think, improved version. The letters are preceded by context-providing introductory essays by Bruce Anderson, collection editor TR Factor, and former RCF senior editor Steven Moore. They all use hedge-your-bets language, probably to forestall cease-and-desist orders, but they don’t hide that they’re all convinced Wanda is Pynchon. The letters are followed by a generous selection of non-Wanda material from AVA: some of Anderson’s editorials and a sampling of letters from others, some of which Wanda had responded to. This material is interesting both for the picture it presents of northern California life—and the tempests in a small-town teapot Wanda could stir up—and for the admiration it inspires for Anderson’s progressive politics. But the Wanda letters are the reason to get this book. Wildly unstructured in form, they offer Wanda’s take on pop culture (she’s 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 comic’s delivery with easily handled encyclopedic knowledge. (That’s what makes me think she’s Pynchon: like him, she seems to know everything.) My favorite moments are a poem Wanda submits to establish her credentials for criticizing locally admired artistes (a poem that silences the chatter of the offended artistic community) and her explanation of the Gospels’ assertion that “the poor you always have with you” (“If you read your Bible thoughtfully, it’s not hard to distinguish between what Jesus really said and what the guys running the rackets put into his mouth after he was dead”). Pynchon fanatics, like me, will be interested in these letters because they might be—despite his protestations—by the mysterious one. But you don’t have to know Pynchon to love Wanda: her style and vision take us through the looking glass to give us a topsy-turvy look at our times. [Robert L. McLaughlin]

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