Pynchon's work influences Jonathan Franzen---V. esp. maybe here

[Mark Kohut]

In an interview on NY1 the other evening, Sam Tanenhaus NYTBR editor and the guy 
who 

raved like a sailor on leave about Freedom, front page NYTBR, spoke about 
writers
who had influenced Franzen, among them Pynchon, Gaddis, Bellow....

This fact is in JF's early essays I think, before he changed writing direction 
after The Twenty-Seventh City.
Reality hunger--in the form of social realism-- set in, one might say. 

Anyway, in The Corrections a main character, an academic who has been fired and 
is self-destructing
in NY City, runs into an investment banker/venture capitalist he knows (thru his 
wife) who is in awe 

of his PhD brains. They meet in a classy food store and he asks our protagonist 
straight out: 


VI: Would you want to have your total personality rewired, slowly, in whatever 
way you want, no pain?....

P: Why do you ask?.....

VI:  New start-up, wants money, I can't get this notion out of my 
head....There may be some metal involved, you
might pick up some unwanted radio talk...Gatorade and other high-electrolyte 
drinks might be a problem....