[Kzyxtalk] Thomas Pynchon and us

[John Sakowicz]

John Sakowicz 


March 27, 2017 at 11:34 am 




To the Editor: 




Nice piece in “Mendocino County Today” (March 27) in the AVA regarding Thomas Pynchon. Thank you. 




Check out this site for all things Pynchon: http://thomaspynchon.com/ 




As a footnote, I have often thought that the bizarre, internal politics of KZYX would make a great subject for Thomas Pynchon. 




Think about it. 




…KZYX, also known as Mendocino County Public Broadcasting, is the final stop in the long, unhappy lives of a lot of dysfunctional, marginalized, old hippies 




…self-important, self-satisfied, self-absorbed old hippies fighting among themselves over a public radio station nobody listens to because the old hippies — you guessed it — mainly just talk to themselves, and to themselves alone, while on-air at KZYX 




…and they fight among themselves they do, in the most beautiful of places, with stunning coastlines and old growth redwoods forests 




… a place, Mendocino County, that, weirdly, Jim Jones, Leonard Lake, Wesley Shermantine, Robert Durst, Charles Ng, and Richard Allen Davis also once called their home, not just the old hippies 




…why? 




…why old hippies and serial killers co-habituating side by side? 




…why find them both here at home in beautiful Mendocino County? 




…because Mendocino County is a great big place, and remote, and nobody asks any questions, and it’s a good place to hide 




…nobody brings critical thinking or reasonable inquiry to any aspect of their lives, or anybody else’s lives, here in Mendocino County, and everybody, it seems, has spun false narratives about themselves that go unchallenged in the purple haze of drugs and amnesia, while, in the background, KZYX airs yet more “essential” Grateful Dead bootlegs. 




If this isn’t Pynchon country, I don’t know what is. 




— John Sakowicz 


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