“Some people think Jim Dodge is actually Thomas Pynchon.”
Those words, followed by a broken chuckle from my professor, were all I needed to hear. I was transfixed. He had spoken the sentence with a mischievous implication of knowing. I looked about the room; nobody else appeared taken aback or affected. I half raised my hand, voicing my disbelief before I had been formally acknowledged. “Wait, people think this Jim Dodge guy is secretly Thomas Pynchon? Why do people say that?” My professor half shrugged, wry smile, nonchalant posture. “That’s what some people say. I guess there are similarities.”
Next week, it was announced, the author Jim Dodge would speak to our class. A real treat and honor to have him swing by. Should be an interesting conversation. So, anyway, start working on your midterm paper before the deadline sneaks up on you!
I held tight, internalizing my astonishment. The notion was outlandish, nonsensical, and preposterous. Right? Thomas Pynchon was not teaching freshman literature at Humboldt State University. Thomas Pynchon was not writing essays about bioregionalism. Thomas Pynchon was not speaking to my grad school cohort next week.
But predestination, or divine will, or providence, or kismet, or fate, or a desire for such occurrences convinced me otherwise. Thomas Pynchon really did pen paperbacks extolling the virtues of bioregionalism. Thomas Pynchon actually was a faculty member at our remote state college. Thomas Pynchon had indeed accepted our professor’s speaking invitation. And maybe Jim Dodge played a muted horn. Maybe Jim Dodge silently awaited the empire. Maybe Jim Dodge had a penchant for V-2 rockets.
Quietly, without broadcasting my fascination, the research began. The famously reclusive author’s Navy portrait showed oversized, crooked front teeth. In Jim Dodge’s university portrait, the teeth were now straight, but still generous for his mouth. Corrective dental work surely obtained via the wealth generated by postmodern literature’s consummate trickster.
Their ages lined up, kind of; at least closely enough to make it feasible. Jim Dodge’s biography said he spent many years living at a crunchy granola commune in Sonoma County, California. Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland was a paean to Northern California wine country and its hippie subculture. And most of all, if an acclaimed novelist desired to camouflage their existence while immersing themselves in a simpatico community, perhaps there could be no finer choice than Humboldt County—a black market sanctuary where anonymity is prized and folks know how to keep secrets.
Jim Dodge spoke to our class. The conversation was convivial and engaging, but I cannot recall any specifics. I spent the session staring into Jim Dodge’s eyes surreptitiously seeking Thomas Pynchon’s soul. I was not so naïve as to flat out ask Jim Dodge who he really was—such frankness would be folly; Thomas Pynchon would, of course, deny his identity having labored decades to obscure it.
And for a while, that was the end of it; my curiosity waned.
But a couple of years following graduation I spied a notice in the local fishwrap announcing a Mensa gathering at the Samoa Cookhouse featuring guest speaker Jim Dodge. I attended the meeting (no test upon entry!) and settled in at a lengthy table alongside mostly graying, bespectacled women. Taking in the blue collar-logger-hero ambiance, we chatted, chewed cornbread, and waited. Finally, Jim Dodge rose from his dining spot, ambled to the lectern, and launched into a grumpy screed bemoaning the lack of literary knowledge his undergraduate students possessed. The kids these days just don’t read books anymore. He wasn’t wrong.
“Let me give you a 20-question quiz I give to my freshman literature students,” Jim Dodge said. “Most students are lucky to get two or three correct answers.”
We geniuses retrieved our pens and pencils, fished up a scrap of paper, and played along. The quiz was reasonably painless. I cannot recall, but the first few answers were likely Hemingway, Shakespeare, and The Turn of the Screw. But I will always remember question number four.
“Who wrote Gravity’s Rainbow?”
Oh, Jim Dodge, you old coyote!