/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.12152858]

Share your Pynchon sighting stories. In 2012, I passed a sidewalk cafe in Manhattan where he was sitting alone. He was reading a copy of Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States”. His lips were moving as he read.

[Anonymous No.12152866]

I saw him in a cafe in the South Island in New Zealand in a Cafe called Lyttelton Coffee Co. He was with several friends and he made a quip about how he looked like a certain American actor, I can't remember who, but I searched it at the time and they did kind of look alike.

[Anonymous No.12152948]

I saw him on the street in Cayucas California a long time ago. I remember briefly thinking about murdering him then and there. I didn’t seriously consider it. It was like when you’re standing on a cliff and you think about jumping off even though you’re not suicidal. I had a knife in my pocket at the time and I thought “I could kill Pynchon and become notorious”. He was walking with a black woman.

[Anonymous No.12152971]

I saw him in a dream once, he floated in through the window and gave me the narrative arc for the greatest story ever told. The next day I wrote what he told me to write in a flurry of inspiration. Unfortunately it couldn't be published, it was deemed too close to Scary Movie 2.

[Anonymous No.12153021]

>>12152858
In the summer of 2008 as I was walking through Columbus, Indiana I spotted him standing inside the Irwin Union Bank wearing a white bucket hat and a shirt with some sort of Hawaiian floral pattern. A young woman, presumably an employee, appeared to be trying to attract his attention, but the slightly stooped Pynchon didn't notice her. He was frozen in front of a large window peering through a pair of oversized binoculars at something across the street. I turned around to see what had so transfixed him and saw a curly-haired woman in a third floor window across the street relaying some sort of message using hand signals. When I turned around to look at Pynchon again he was gone. I walked inside the Irwin Union Bank hoping to find him but all I found was a folded piece of paper on the ground where he had been standing. I unfolded it hoping to find a note but nothing was written.

[Anonymous No.12153290]

saw him back in 1977? in monee illinois. walked into a bar and he was sitting there with a dog propped up on the stool next to his. didnt know who was at the time.

[Anonymous No.12153429]

>>12153290
>having been alive and aware of Pynchon's existence in 1977
You were born in, at least, 1957. How are you doing grandpa?

[Anonymous No.12153463]

Saw him smoking a cigarette behind the restaurant I work at a few years back. I was out for a cigarette myself and he approached me and offered me one of his. He said they were Lucky Strikes from WW2 and I believed him. We stood smoking in silence for a few minutes.
He finished his, stubbed it out on a rat corpse. He turned to me and said "Well, suppose I'd better get back to them, don't work too hard, OK?" and then climbed down an open manhole. A few minutes later I heard gunshots.

[Anonymous No.12153470]

I saw him back in 2002 at a public library in a town called Willimantic. I swear it was him, and he was sitting at one of the computer desks with a long trench coat and a baseball cap for the Cincinnati Reds that he was nervously gripping as he read his computer screen. I didn't want to say anything to him to make him feel uncomfortable or anything so I walked past him and managed to see he was reading online reviews of Vineland and whispering softly to himself.

[Anonymous No.12153488]

I work for a us gov funded research lab and was sent to antarctica a few years ago with the rest of my team. we left the base to go to one of the spots where we needed to collect data and we saw a man hiking along singing showtunes. he saluted us as he passed. it was pynchon

[Anonymous No.12153491]

>>12152858
I know you are all trolling, but my dad is good friends with him. What do you want to know?

[Anonymous No.12153495]

>>12153491
what's his go-to sandwich filling?

[Anonymous No.12153506]

>>12153495
Obviously I don’t know shit like that. More general.

[Anonymous No.12153510]

>>12153506
what's some books he's been reading

[Anonymous No.12153512]

>>12153506
how often does he bathe?

[Anonymous No.12153561]

>>12153506
What's he working on?

[Anonymous No.12153568]

>>12153510
From what I’ve heard older shit. Some Joyce and Chaucer actually. Side note: he detest DFW.
>>12153561
Nothing. But who really knows.

[Anonymous No.12153574]

>>12153568
>he detest DFW.
haha

[Anonymous No.12153578]

>>12153491
My dad works for nintendo aswell anon, what an amazing coincidence!

[Anonymous No.12153583]

>>12153574
I think he got a bunch of fan mail from lit fags asking his opinion or something.

[Anonymous No.12153590]

>>12153583
I wouldn't be suprised if he was browising this place, or even opened this thread.

Pic related, took this pic the last time I saw him

[Anonymous No.12153641]

>>12153590
Looking good for his age.

[Anonymous No.12153646]

>>12153641
Demons age pretty well.

[Anonymous No.12153787]

>>12153506
What is he like to talk to? Like mannerisms and stuff?

[Anonymous No.12153813]

>>12153568
>From what I’ve heard older shit. Some Joyce and Chaucer actually.
He’s probably reading them for the first time, if at all, the illiterate goon.

[Anonymous No.12153827]

>>12153491
Who is your dad?

[Anonymous No.12153869]

>>12153491
How many joints does he smoke on a given morning or does he vape these days?

[Anonymous No.12153988]

>>12153787
Pretty normal dude. Not excentric or anything. He does add a little tail to every story he tells though.
>>12153827
Just a friend of his from school.

[Anonymous No.12153997]

>>12153869
I’ve never heard him mention wees one, nor has my dad.

[Anonymous No.12154006]

>>12153988
>He does add a little tail to every story he tells though
I’m not sure what that means.

[Anonymous No.12154016]

It's gonna be a sad sad day when Pynch goes to the other side. All those anons that will never get a chance to pretend to have seen him, know him personally or be him themself.

[Anonymous No.12154031]

Pynchon was the commencment speaker at my amateur improv class, after handing us our diplomas he shocked us with a joybuzzer when we shook hands

[Anonymous No.12154110]

>>12153463
Good post

[Anonymous No.12154139]

>>12153491
way to dick up the thread

[Anonymous No.12154166]

>>12154110
Yeah it made me laugh hard.

[Anonymous No.12154168]

>>12153290
One of my uncles did something similar. My grandmother died, he was some kind of "dandy" with an alcoholism problem, so while the rest of his brothers and sisters were arranging the funeral he took some cash and jewels from my deceased grandma, got drunk and went straight to a nice restaurant and took two stray dogs with him, got a table and ordered food for him and his dogs. That's one of the stories my mother told me about him.

[Anonymous No.12154271]

I saw him once in a bar in downtown Manhattan around 2003. He was sitting on a stool at the bar mumbling quietly to himself while holding a bottle of absolut vodka by the neck. He would occasionally take big swings of the drink and had finished about half of the bottle within 15 minutes of me being there. The bartender would confront him every 3 swigs or so and try to make Pynchon leave becuase outside drinks weren’t allowed; Pynchon would then go on to ask the man what his favorite fart joke was and the bartender would leave. I got up from my table and approached him like I didn’t know who he was and sat next to him. I asked him how he was doing and he said he was “glim-glam-tabulous.” After that he asked me “what’s your favorite cartoon funny from the telly” and jabbed me in the side with his elbow while giggling. I was in the process of answering him when he said “well, got to go old chap, times a tickin” and he handed me the bottle. He stood up, called the bartender over to implicate me of bringing in outside drinks, and left. The bartender sighed at me saying that Pynchon had come in every day for the past week and had drove all his customers away. Apparently Pynchon walked around the bar discussing Cold War era politics, differential equations, the pitfalls of Taoism, and gay sex enough that no one would come to his bar anymore. He broke down crying in front of me and vowed to kill Pynchon the next time he saw him. I went back to that same bar 3 days later and found out from a neighboring shop that the bartender had thrown himself from the roof 30 minutes after I left.

[Anonymous No.12154289]

>>12154271
Wow. Seriously?

[Anonymous No.12154294]

i was taking a dump at school and forgot to lock the cubicle door and pynchon opened the door, he said sorry and he went in the cubicle next to me and had an explosive diarrhea dump. it smelt really bad so i finished dumping and left (without washing my hands)

[Anonymous No.12154456]

I saw him squeezing out my bedroom window as I rolled into my driveway. Once inside I found my wife lying spread eagle on the bed, eyes rolled back in her head, paralyzed by bliss, with her cunt wide enough to fit a half dozen cue balls.

[Anonymous No.12154633]

>>12152858
I beat the shit out of him decades ago and told him never to show his face in public again.

[Anonymous No.12154645]

>>12153463
lmao

[Anonymous No.12154737]

I was driving down the highway in Providence in the summer a few years ago when Sam Hyde pulled up next to me in a juiced up truck. I rolled down the window, but before I could say anything he shoved the passenger door open and started making crazy faces and yelling nonsense at me. I didn't know what to do so I just spit in his face and drove off.

[Anonymous No.12154882]

A couple years ago I remember one Saturday, I woke up hungover as hell because the night before I drank a whole bottle of vodka by myself, so after I realized I was still alive and feeling a massive headache I decided to grab some breakfast at my usual place.
Managed to get out my shitty motel bed and get into the bathroom, and I shit you not, my sore eyes couldn't believe what I was seeing in the mirror. Turns out I was Pynchon the whole time.

[Anonymous No.12154898]

>>12154882
all was written on the business cards, Tom,
ya only had to reach down your bootleg jeans pocket..

[Anonymous No.12155088]

>>12154271

This is definitely Pynchon telling a story about himself in the third person

[Anonymous No.12156434]

>>12152858
Bump

[Anonymous No.12156463]

>>12153988
yearbook or fuck off

[Anonymous No.12156688]

I was just wandering around New York one afternoon when I spied Pynchon coming out of a side alley smelling suspiciously of off brand air freshener. He looked me directly in the eyes and gave me a knowing wink as if my entire life had just been some elaborate build up to a joke orchestrated by none other then the Pynchmeister himself, and that now he would pull back the curtains to reveal the zany punchline of the whole thing. Then he turned around and started to walk away without looking back. I've never been sure, but I think I saw a bright yellow rubber chicken tucked under one of his arms as he faded into the teeming throng of people.

[Anonymous No.12156782]

Pychon repeatedly raided our trash a few years back.
He always came at night scattering the trash everywhere, knocking over the cans and making loud grunting sounds.
I'm not entirely sure but I think he was eating the leftovers we threw out the day before.
Anyway, one day I managed to surprise and hit him with a broom, he just screeched and scattered into the dark before I could land another hit.
Haven’t seen him around our house since then.

[Anonymous No.12156949]

In spanish because I cant turn off the autocorrect

Trabajaba antes de profesor en una escuela de una zona de gentrificacion reciente en Santiago de Chile. En el colegio organizamos un taller-concurso para que los niños practiquen su escritura y alguien logro que Pynchon estuviera en el jurado, que componíamos además la persona que trabajaba en la biblioteca y yo, que representaba al área de ciencias.

Al examinar los cuentos uno por uno frente a los chicos, Pynchon le dio la calificación de "mediocre" a todos los cuentos (aunque nosotros habíamos indicado que solo habría excelentes, muy bueno y bueno por no lastimar a los niños) excepto a uno al que claramente el le había dado uno de sus propios trabajos para que ingrese al concurso.

Debido a que la tercera persona del jurado no reconocía lo que era el intento de Pynchon de hacer pasar su escritura como la de alguien de doce y yo simplemente no tenía ganas de discutir le dimos el premio al cabro este. El premio era una semana de almuerzo gratis en la cafeteria.

Durante la ceremonia tuvimos que entregarle a todos los niños sus "mediocre". Pynchon ademas tiro desde una flor en su saco un chorro de agua a la abuela de uno de los concursantes cuando fue a tomarse una foto con nosotros y su nieto, el cual era de una de las pocas familias de clase trabajadora que todavía quedaba por la zona.

Durante la semana siguiente, dos de los cinco días me crucé a Pynchon almorzando en la cafetería sin pagar.

[Anonymous No.12157573]

I was at a party at uni when I was younger and saw my acid dealer from afar there and was walking up to ask him if he had any acid on him when Pynchon came out from behind some other people with a drink in his hand and started talking to my dealer. He had a thick fuzzy gray mustache and bedraggled grayish white hair hanging down over his ears. He also had Groucho Marx glasses on with the black mustache covering up his real mustache. The music was really loud and I was still pretty far and walking up to them, and I have pretty bad hearing in general. so I couldn’t hear the whole convo exactly but it appeared Pynchon was asking him something. My dealer responded affirmatively and asked a question himself, then Pynchon answered something and my dealer seemed pretty surprised and said something in response. By this point I had gotten a lot closer and I saw my dealer pull out about 20 ten-strips from his pocket. He seemed a bit nervous and said, “You sure about this, man?” and Pynchon was just saying, “Yeah, yeah, man, of course.” He took out a bunch of $20s from his pocket and paid him, buying all the acid my dealer had, and instantly just put all the strips in his mouth and started chewing them like they were candy. It must have been hundreds of doses easily, and my dealer was kinda worried but laughing at the same time and glad to have gotten so much money at once.

I told my dealer that, damn, I was just about to ask him if he had any acid, did he give it all to Pynchon? Unfortunately, yeah, he did, my dealer responded. He was laughing kind of nervously but also kind of impressedly, looking at Pynchon wondering what was about to happen to him. Pynchon wandered about the party for another hour or so asking people if they had shrooms, coke, and even bizarre psychedelics few people have heard of or dare to do like amanita muscaria and datura AKA jimsonweed. This is what I heard from friends, at least, one of whom did indeed sell him some coke. My dealer says Tom came up to him an hour or two later still surprisingly together and told him, “You’re a stupid fucking nigger and a sheep and it’s your kind which allowed the Jews to do 9/11 and hoodwink the entire American populace right under our noses.” Then he did a sort of handstand with only one hand somehow, keeping the other hand behind his back, and hopped out of the party on just that one hand.

Wherever that guy may be now and whatever he’s doing, I tip my hat off to him and hope he’s doing well.

[Anonymous No.12158573]

Holy shit I just met Pynchon yesterday in a bar in NYC.
So I'm sitting down with my gf having a cup of coffee when some lanky old dude with a newsboy hat enters the establishment and stands there at the door like an idiot for maybe a minute. I recognize him immediately but I'm too far away to greet him. Besides, I don't want to be mistaken and look like a fool.
So he stands there for a good minute, then he slowly starts strutting across the place to some generic samba music that was playing inside. Naturally I'm kinda weirded out, but everyone else is just minding their own business like they're familiar with him and see this every day.
So he struts across the bar and continues to shuffle in front of the barista. She asks him what he will have and Pynch replies "And how about you, you mammary". She laughs nervously and corrects him like he is a little child: "No, you'll have a milk with some lemon in it, isn't that right?". Pynch just keeps saying he'll have her over and over again and does some weird ass spin which I suppose was meant as an invitation to dance. Of course she declines. At this point I'm cringing like mad but can't stop watching. He notices me and struts over to the table. Somehow I introduce myself and say I'm a big fan of his. He starts laughing like a madman at first, then he screams at my girlfriend while not breaking eye contact for 15-20 seconds or so, and so loud my ears literally start hurting from the vibrations. He finally spits into her drink and says something like "mmm, kafe a la puttanesca?". I'm fucking frozen and don't want to do shit because he's looking really old and physically frail, so I'm just taken aback while he struts out of the bar (no music is even playing, just the announcer talking).
So that happened, we just got the hell out of there, barista apologizing to us and asking us to come again.

[Anonymous No.12158878]

>>12152858
>be in a bar in NY
>go to toilet to take a shit
>in the cabin next door there's a man
>the man is mumbling something
>he flushes the toilet
>as he leaves he starts singing
>it's a song about bananas
>in the tune of the Beach Boys
>he left without washing his hands
>
>as I leave the man in the third cabin starts singing the same tune
>
>mfw

[Anonymous No.12158923]

>>12158878
>farina, banana, nananananana
>charles mason, j. dixon, come on dicky nixon
>shambhala, vhe-issu, baby it's no issue
>because entropy
>baby, that's
>inevitability

[Anonymous No.12158962]

>>12156949
pinche Pynchon

[Anonymous No.12158974]

>>12158923
Great post.

[Anonymous No.12159015]

>>12152858
in 2018 i saw a mong of unrivaled colossal retardation with a miniscule close to nonexistant STD ridden faggot willy make a cringy bait thread on a bamboo hydration forums lit board

[Anonymous No.12159110]

>>12154016
>All those anons that will never get a chance to pretend to have seen him
t. doesn't know what 'pretend' means

[Anonymous No.12160649]

blimp

[Anonymous No.12160953]

I ran into the Pynch at a Dollar General outside of Elizabethtown, Kentucky. He was looking at greeting cards and seem intensely focused on a jokey birthday card that featured an old-fashioned outhouse. He wandered around after that, and ended up buying #10 envelopes, some chewy Chips Ahoy, and one of those little eyeglass repair kits.

[Anonymous No.12161017]

>>12153590
wow pynchon looks like a friend i used to have

[Anonymous No.12161030]

>>12157573
fake.

[Anonymous No.12161098]

>>12153568
>he detest DFW

[Anonymous No.12161124]

Back in 2004 I saw Pinecone at a Blockbuster in South Carolina. I was there to rent my favourite movie, The Terminator, for like the fifteenth time. Pychon was at the register before me, arguing with the cashier about why they did not have Shrek 2 although it was released on DVD like 3 weeks previous. I wanted to speak to him but I did not come up with anything to say.

[Anonymous No.12161168]

>>12158573
This is the most plausible one.

[anonymous No.12161282]

Pynchon is a slightly retarded fella who's worked at my company for 30 yrs. taking out trash and recyclables, peeling vinyl off of sheet metal parts and doing simple pre-assembly. He has a strong fetish for garage sales and this is where our paths converge in earnest: he has a thing for any and all old radios and will buy any old country or polka he can find on record, 8-track or cassette. When my elderly neighbor, who headed a polka band (the Gene LeBotte Orchestra) passed a couple years ago his widow gave me all the leftover copies of their 1984 record "From Friendly Napawaupee". I brought one to work for Pynchon as a good faith gift and he was weird about it. I think he expected more records. He was a volume buyer apparently. Anyway, now whenever garage sale season comes around or a new thrift store carrying used records opens up, he taunts me. "I'm gonna get all the records... polka records, country western, 50s - 60s.... you don't get any..." etc. He brags about how cheap he's going to get them and I KNOW he's going to these places harassing folks trying to get them down to 50 cents on a dollar record. At first it was funny but after several years of it, it's just kind of annoying.

[Anonymous No.12161356]

>>12154271
I unironically believe this

[Anonymous No.12161481]

>>12152971
lol

[Anonymous No.12161486]

>>12153491
imagine lying about who your dad is friends with
next time sneak a picture of him and post it on here

[Anonymous No.12161580]

Do you think Pynchon would visit a Pynchon Theme Park?
With a rocket shaped Gravity's Rainbow rollercoaster, a Mason/Dixon trainway line, a Golden Fang ferris wheel, etc etc

[Anonymous No.12161695]

>>12161580
Sounds like fun. Assuming there's less decay and child prostitutes trying to subvert you into doing Their business than the theme park in GR.
Also needs a bobbing for Don Delillo novels tank.

[Anonymous No.12161698]

>>12153506
How often does he get laid?

[anonymous No.12162118]

and fucking dirigibles. don't forget those stupid things.

[Anonymous No.12162119]

>>12162118
ksjfhgkgfxhgkljhgfalsghvbsdkyhgkcjh