Another unexpected Pynchon influence, which I love to post here...

[Mark Kohut]

Keith recently posted praise of an Edward Jones work here. I've wanted to
read him ( more) too.
Only read a story once and punked out of his novel because I'm weak and a
sinner. See Dante.

So, a 2004 story,  Old Boys, Old Girls,  from his last collection and The
New Yorker is in this big anthology I have by Lorrie Moore who wrote a very
witty on the road as a writer intro.

And there it is. Crying out.

Although I remember a good  movie with a willfully inconclusive ending and
I know it is one way of other modernists, I have never read a story which
adapts so unexpectedly, so clearly but differently, in a way that casts
meaning backward, so to speak and proclaim as if I were James Wood--who
loves the rare great endings ( unless they are Pynchon's ), the very trope
THE CRYING OF LOT 49 ends with.

Read it, I suggest.