"Hey, man, would you like a joint?"

[jolly]

"Nevertheless, from my brief encounter with Pynchon I gleaned a few things about the man behind the screen. I know that he follows the reviews and evidently cares what critics say about him. That he probably has help with his research. That he usually works slowly and disparages Lot 49--wrongly, I believe--because he wrote hastily. That he's shy, doesn't talk much, and doesn't open up to strangers. That he's intense and has lots of nervous energy--the nail biting and cup shredding. That he picks his friends carefully to guard himself: no wonder trust and betrayal are central themes in Vineland. That he writes his friends into his fiction. That, at least during the late sixties, he was a heavy doper--thus his sympathy with an aging, beleagured head like Zoyd Wheeler. That he's generous, shares his stash and doesn't bogart his joints. That, like Benny Profane in V., he is "given to sentimental impulses" (1): he writes love letters, stays friends with a former lover, and shows up at her
 wedding. That, despite his reserved, introverted manner, he seems to care deeply: keep cool but care. That he reads a lot, including novels by his contemporaries. That he loves rock music, which is all over Vineland. That he's got a zany streak: the sense of play in his fiction is part of his life--he likes to set off firecrackers in the middle of the night. Does that explain the fascination with rockets in Gravity's Rainbow? Probably not, but it's nice to think of his fiction as a string of exploding firecrackers."
 
http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/agordon/pynchon.htm
 

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