The Summer 2005 issue—no, wait, the “June/July/Aug/Sept 2005” issue—of Bookforum is coming out in a week or so, and it contains a special section on Thomas Pynchon. Check out the section’s stellar list of contributors:

The man on the cover is Irwin Corey, a loopy comic actor whom Pynchon sent to represent him at the 1974 National Book Awards. When the time came for Pynchon to accept the fiction citation for Gravity’s Rainbow, it was Corey who went onstage and accepted the award from a baffled Ralph Ellison. Corey then delivered a bizarre humdinger of an acceptance speech. You can listen to a short excerpt of it here (Windows Media format). And you can read a transcript of the whole thing here.

The 1974 National Book Awards took place on April 18, a mere two and a half weeks after what is perhaps the most famous streaking incident of all time: On April 2, a streaker named Robert Opel bounded across the stage as David Niven was presenting an award at the 1974 Oscars. Toward the end of his Pynchon acceptance speech, Corey expressed his thanks to “Mr. Knopf, who just ran through the auditorium.” (The transcript indicates that a streaker actually ran across the stage during the ceremony, but I don’t think this is true—I couldn’t find confirmation of it anywhere online. For a couple of minutes, though, I was thinking, “Yes! A streaker! At the National Book Awards! Awesome!” How fucking hilarious would that have been?)

[Side note: According to a website I stumbled onto a few minutes ago, the German term for streaking is Nackerblitz, which translates roughly as “nude lightning.” However, there are only about five Google hits for Nackerblitz, so the word is apparently not widely used.]

Update, May 26: Some content from Bookforum’s summer issue is now online, including part of the Pynchon section.