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Tony Miksak's
Words on Books
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Wanda Tinasky Unmasked, Part Two

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Some years ago, a mysterious letter writer calling herself Wanda Tinasky made herself famous spewing awful and awfully witty public prose at the artists, poets and politicians of Mendocino County. Her venue was Bruce Anderson's weekly Anderson Valley Advertiser. After hundreds of scathing letters stretching to September, 1988, Wanda suddenly and uncharacteristically went silent.

In his paper, Bruce Anderson announced the astonishing supposition that novelist Thomas Pynchon and letter-writer Wanda Tinasky were the same person. The evidence fit.

Pynchon was reclusive; Wanda Tinasky was clearly a pseudonym. Pynchon may have lived in this county while writing the novel Vineland. Tellingly, in one letter Wanda professed to be writing 'a thinly veiled novel of life in romantic Mendocino County' while living as a bag lady under a bridge north of Fort Bragg. A rural legend was born.

Last year a Vassar College professor published a letter in the AVA claiming he had proof Tinasky was NOT Thomas Pynchon. The engrossing details can be found in Don Foster's excellent new book, Author Unknown, On the Trail of Anonymous. Professor Foster has impressive credentials, having worked successfully for criminal investigators on cases involving identification of suspects by their written words.

Intrigued by the mystery, Foster read Wanda's letters. In 1996 they had been collected in The Letters of Wanda Tinasky, edited by TR Factor of Cannon Beach, Oregon.

"I was slow to perceive the obvious," Foster recalls. "Wanda was witty, smart, and well read. She may have read Pynchon, but she did not seem (to me) very Pynchonian... for one thing, Wanda was too funny. Pynchon wields his irony like a rapier, deftly. Wanda's punch lines usually left some Mendocino County poet or other bleeding on the floor."

Foster pondered. He eliminated local candidates. Who was Wanda?

A mention by Wanda of a stint ghost writing for Paul Krassner "while he was ghosting for Lenny Bruce" put the stymied Foster on the right track at last.

Searching obscure library collections for early books about Paul Krassner, Foster stumbled across the works of a "Tim Hawkins." Another Wanda mention of an "Open Letter to Gary Snyder" led to a phone call from Foster to Snyder.

Yes, Snyder remembered "Tim" or "Tom" Hawkins quite well. He had not heard from him in years. Foster found "Tom Hawkins" in the Fort Bragg phone book, and contacted him. It was the wrong Tom, but this Tom remembered "another, older, Tom Hawkins, also of Fort Bragg, who passed away, oh, maybe ten years back, in '88 or thereabouts. Drove his car into the ocean and drowned."

Foster did a reverse-telephone lookup for Tom Hawkin's old address in Fort Bragg, and got in touch with the current owners. In the shed out back where Tom did most of his writing was an old Underwood typewriter and reams of correspondence including cards and letters addressed to Mr. Hawkins by Kenneth Patchen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Gary Snyder. And back issues of the AVA.

Wanda Tinasky turned out to be Tom Hawkins, friend of the Beats, pseudonymous author of the letters, and a highly disturbed person who, sadly, killed his wife, burned their house with her in it, and committed suicide driving his car over the cliffs near Ten Mile River.

Still, this is Mendocino, and not everyone will be convinced by the accumulated evidence. TR Factor, who edited the Tinasky letters and assisted Foster in his research, this week sent me an email. She says she has not seen Foster's book "nor do I have any interest in it." She thinks Foster may have gotten it right, but for different reasons than stated in his book.

Gordon Black, local poet prominent in the Wanda letters and in Foster's book, phoned me after last week's piece on Wanda Tinasky to warn, "I would not be too readily accepting of Foster's theory." He also had not seen the book.

What is the truth here? I am convinced by Foster's thorough research. Maybe you will be too, when you read his book. Maybe not. That's the literary life in Mendocino County.

Aired Friday November 10, 2000 at 8:35 am and Sunday November 12, 2000 at 6:55 pm



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