Pynchon Pre-Birthday Bash a Regular Krupp Wingding

[Dave Monroe]

Friday May 02, 2008
Pynchon Pre-Birthday Bash a Regular Krupp Wingding

Red Hook's Freebird Books is throwing a party Sunday afternoon in
honor of Thomas Pynchon's upcoming 71st birthday, but the
announcements the store's co-owner, Peter Miller, has been sending out
are already making waves. One writer who received the invitation
feting "that lovable recluse and buck-toothed prophet of paranoia"
wrote Miller to complain that "it is insulting to characterize Mr.
Pynchon by his teeth," then found fault with the menu, which consists
of "foodstuffs famously vomited by Gravity's Rainbow's Tyrone
Slothrop: burgers, homefries, chef's salad with French dressing,
Moxie, after-dinner mints, Clark bars, salted peanuts, and 'the cherry
from some Radcliffe girl's old-fashioned.'"

"There are many wonderful foods in Pynchon's work, starting with
bananas and good coffee. perhaps," this unnamed writer chastises.
"Mason & Dixon... is loaded with some interesting foods...What
Slothrop vomits is a (light) comic riff on bad food in our fast-food
overprocessed world. Honor Pynchon's life-embracing love of the right
kind of food, if one is having a party for him, I say."
"I will say, in full disclosure, that I surely do not have the sense
of humor Mr. Pynchon does," the letter winds down, "so perhaps I am
too earnest and am making mountains out of what Pynchon would not."
Perhaps. Anyway, if Miller isn't hauled into jail for postering party
fliers around the neighborhood—and he reports that he's already gotten
one warning—the party's set to begin at 3 p.m.

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/party_hopping/pynchon_prebirthday_bash_a_regular_krupp_wingding_83930.asp