In the mid-1960s, both Thomas Pynchon and the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson were forging new creative paths in their respective art forms. Both artists, fueled by visions partially — or significantly — enhanced by the ingesting of psychedelics, were attempting to capture these visions in their work. Pynchon, in his groundbreaking third novel Gravity’s Rainbow, and Wilson, trying to further extend his idea of “a teenage symphony to God” with the highly anticipated follow-up to the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds LP (1966), were trying to bring it all together.

Pynchon was able to wrangle his deep and complex vision into an incredible novel, winning the National Book Award in 1974 and almost garnering a Pulitzer Prize (rather than select such a controversial novel, the jurors gave out no prize for literature in 1974). Wilson, however, facing pushback from his band (made up of three brothers and a cousin) and his record company, as well as a psyche increasingly destabilized by his drug intake, was unable to bring his Smile project to fruition.

Yes, these two artistic giants did meet, due to Pynchon’s enthusiasm for Pet Sounds and a Cornell classmate, writer Jules Siegel (RIP), who also knew Brian Wilson. The meeting, which occurred sometime in 1966, didn’t result in any meaningful exchange of ideas between the two; but a meeting by two such highly creative men at the height of their powers and both involved in massive projects, is noteworthy. Here’s the story….

Thomas Pynchon Hears Pet Sounds

In his March 1977 Playboy article “Who Is Thomas Pynchon…And Why Did He Take Off With My Wife?” writer Jules Siegel claims that in 1966 while on assignment to do an article on Bob Dylan for The Saturday Evening Post, he visited Pynchon in the one-room apartment he rented in Manhattan Beach, California, to wit:

I told [Pynchon] about the Dylan assignment. ‘You ought to do one on The Beach Boys,’ he said. I pretended to ignore that. A year or so later, I was in Los Angeles again, doing a story for the Post on The Beach Boys [ultimately published by Cheetah magazine]. He had forgotten his earlier remark and was no longer interested in them. I took him to my apartment in Laurel Canyon, got him royally loaded and made him lie down on the floor with a speaker at each ear while I played Pet Sounds, their most interesting and least popular record. It was not then fashionable to take The Beach Boys seriously.

‘Ohhhhh,” he sighed softly with stunned pleasure after the record was done. ‘Now I understand why you are writing a story about them.’

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