I am a lifelong Pynchon fan

[Toby Levy]

Hello fellow Pynchon lovers.  I have been signed on and reading the
incredible volume of messages for just over a week.  I was on the
Pynchon list a long time ago, when days went by without a message being
posted and a big day was four or five messages.

My fandom goes back to the days when I was in high school and a copy of
V. kept staring at me from the paperback rack in the drug store in the
town I lived in on the south shore of Long Island.  I must have read the
blurbs at least a dozen times on a dozen trips to the store before I
bought the book.  Even after I finally broke down and bought it I did
not read it right away.  I took it with me to college in Utica (in the
center of New York State) and read it early in my freshman year, 1965.
Some time after that I was in Manhattan, cruising The Strand book store
when I asked the clerk if this Pynchon guy had any other books.  The
clerk told me that The Crying of Lot 49 had been published a few months
earlier and I bought a copy.  I told him I would really like to write a
letter to the author and he suggested I call the book company for an
address.  I went to a pay phone on the street and they gave me the
address of Candida Donadio's office.  It was less than a mile from there
so I walked over and got in to see her.  She was incredibly rude!  I
don't think I ever got over that experience.

Back in college I continued read and reread Pynchon's two novels.  When
Secret Integration came out in the Saturday Evening Post I fell in love
with that too.  I visited a friend at Cornell and cruised the library
looking at the yearbooks from the years of Pynchon's attendance and
found references to him but no pictures.   (A couple of years ago I had
a boss who went to Cornell in the 50s and attended a few classes with
Pynchon.  All she had to say was that Pynchon was quiet and attentive in
class.)

After a couple of extended hiatuses I was a senior at Utica College the
year Gravity's Rainbow was published.  Months before the news of the
forthcoming novel was announced I made the bold statement in a lit class
that Pynchon was the only contemporary author worth studying in that
class and he wasn't even being taught.  The teacher and the students all
laughed at me and I wonder what they think now.

I have loved Pynchon for over 30 years now and continue to adore his
writing.  I have read the first three novels over a dozen times each
and have read Vineland a couple-three times.

I am reading M&D at a leisurely pace.  It is truly a feast for a Pynchon
fan.  His writing is as wonderful as ever.  Even after reading just a
bit more than a tenth of the novel, I am certain that it is a worthy
addition to the canon.  Long live the greatest living American author!
Long live the Pynchon-list.  I hope I can make a constructive
contribution to this list.  Everyone, keep up the great conversation.

Toby Levy