Thomas Pynchon Quote
I had my Boswell, once, Mason tells Boswell, Dixon and I. We had a joint Boswell. Preacher nam’d Cherrycoke. Scribbling ev’rything down, just like you, Sir. Have you, twirling his Hand in Ellipses,— you know, ever . . . had one yourself? If I’m not prying. Had one what? Hum . . . a Boswell, Sir,— I mean, of your own. Well you couldn’t very well call him that, being one yourself,— say, a sort of Shadow ever in the Room who has haunted you, preserving your ev’ry spoken remark,— Which else would have been lost forever to the great Wind of Oblivion,— think, armsweep south, as all civiliz’d Britain gathers at this hour, how much shapely Expression, from the titl’d Gambler, the Barmaid’s Suitor, the offended Fopling, the gratified Toss-Pot, is simply fading away upon the Air, out under the Door, into the Evening and the Silence beyond. All those voices. Why not pluck a few words from the multitudes rushing toward the Void of forgetfulness?
I had my Boswell, once, Mason tells Boswell, Dixon and I. We had a joint Boswell. Preacher nam’d Cherrycoke. Scribbling ev’rything down, just like you, Sir. Have you, twirling his Hand in Ellipses,— you know, ever . . . had one yourself? If I’m not prying. Had one what? Hum . . . a Boswell, Sir,— I mean, of your own. Well you couldn’t very well call him that, being one yourself,— say, a sort of Shadow ever in the Room who has haunted you, preserving your ev’ry spoken remark,— Which else would have been lost forever to the great Wind of Oblivion,— think, armsweep south, as all civiliz’d Britain gathers at this hour, how much shapely Expression, from the titl’d Gambler, the Barmaid’s Suitor, the offended Fopling, the gratified Toss-Pot, is simply fading away upon the Air, out under the Door, into the Evening and the Silence beyond. All those voices. Why not pluck a few words from the multitudes rushing toward the Void of forgetfulness?
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About Thomas Pynchon
Hailing from Long Island, Pynchon served two years in the United States Navy and earned an English degree from Cornell University. After publishing several short stories in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he began composing the novels for which he is best known: V. (1963), The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), and Gravity's Rainbow (1973). Rumors of a historical novel about Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon had circulated as early as the 1980s; the novel, Mason & Dixon, was published in 1997 to critical acclaim. His 2009 novel Inherent Vice was adapted into a feature film by Paul Thomas Anderson in 2014. Pynchon is notoriously reclusive from the media; few photographs of him have been published, and rumors about his location and identity have circulated since the 1960s. Pynchon's most recent novel, Shadow Ticket, is expected to be published in 2025.