Happy 70th Birthday Thomas Pynchon!

[Tore Rye Andersen]

>According to the Zone time, it's May 8. And we, good old Europeans, are 
>raising tankards with foaming ale to the health of Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, 
>the greatest living author.
>Many happy returns!

Psalms 90:10:

"The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of 
strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; 
for it is soon cut off, and we fly away."

Personally, I've always hoped that this particular calculation is off by at 
least a couple-three decades, and I'm guessing that today of all days, 
Pynchon is hoping for the same.
Here are Maskelyne's gloomy musings upon his 29th birthday:

"Twenty-nine's Fell Shadow! O, inhospitably final year of any Pretense to 
Youth, its Dreams now, how wither'd away...tho' styl'd a Prime, yet bid'st 
thou Adieu to the Prime of Life!...There,-- there, in the Stygian Mists of 
Futurity, loometh the dread Thirty,-- Transition unspeakable! Prime so soon 
fallen, thy Virtue so easily broken, into a Number divisible,-- 
penetrable!-- by six others!" (M&D, 118)

....I wonder what Pynchon would imagine Maskelyne saying on his 70th birthday 
(Maskelyne lived 78 years)...

Anyway, Happy Birthday, Thomas Pynchon!

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