What is Pynchonian?

[David Casseres]

Among other good things, Monte sez

>At a nuts 'n bolts level apart from the Big Literary Picture, TRP is very,
>very good at this. He does assume a depth and intensity of reader interest
>any science teacher or writer would yearn for, but given that, he plays
>scrupulously fair with "what you need to know to make sense of B and
>connect it to A". And, of course,  he writes so damn well that he earns
>that depth and intensity from anyone less brain-damaged than, say, a
>book-award judge.
>
>-Monte
>
>PS -- "A real working knowledge" can cover a multitude of inadequacies --
>for teachers, science writers, and TRP. Things that he and others have
>written assure me that sometimes he skims the cream of a topic, and
>tap-dances from fact to fact so well that he *gives the impression* of more
>knowledge than he in fact has. But that's a perfectly legitimate artistic
>move in itself, like the Hitchcock "profile" caricature that somehow
>summons up the man in a curve and a squiggle.

Well said.  Am I the only one who thinks he remembers reading that 
Pynchon worked for Boeing as a technical writer?  There's not another 
trade like it for developing that nuts'n'bolts sense of how to use 
"working knowledge," and as I spent years doing tech writing, I've always 
fancied I saw the traits of a good tech writer in Our Man.


Cheers,
David