Prince and Pauper

[Ya Sam]

"Thomas Pynchon got there first. His arrival on earth preceded Robert 
Stone's by a scant three and a half months.
His Arrival - Big A - in American literature preceded Stone's by quite a bit 
longer. Pynchon's first novel "V" - which some of us still think one of the 
authentic wonders of the literary world - appeared in 1963. Stone's superb 
but far less magisterial first novel "A Hall of Mirrors" wasn't published 
until August of 1967 (the so-called "Summer of Love," appropriately.)

But that's all right. While Pynchon was lionized and contending uneasily 
with the game of literary fame and expectation that previously drove J. D. 
Salinger into lifelong seclusion (as it soon did Pynchon), Stone was a 
yet-to-be living the '60s counter-cultural life par excellence.

Think of them as their literary era's Prince and Pauper, a little Twain 
fable of our national letters in one of the last century's key decades. 
Pynchon was born into relative Long Island prosperity and stability; Stone 
was the son of a single schizophrenic mother whose straits with her son were 
dire indeed throughout his childhood."....

http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20070107/1055935.asp

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