Thomas Pynchon Quote
Someone brings up Sandwiches, and someone else a Bottle, and as night comes down over New-York like a farmer’s Mulch, sprouting seeds of Light, some reflected in the River, the Company, Mason working on in its midst, becomes much exercis’d upon the Topick of Representation. No taxation— — without it, yesyes but Drogo, lad, can you not see, even thro’ the Republican fogs which ever hang about these parts, that ’tis all a moot issue, as America has long been perfectly and entirely represented in the House of Commons, thro’ the principle of Virtual Representation? Cries of, Aagghh! and, That again? If this be part of Britain here, then so must be Bengal! For we have ta’en both from the French. We purchas’d India many times over with the Night of the Black Hole alone,— as we have purchas’d North America with the lives of our own. Are even village Idiots taken in any more by that empty cant? mutters the tiny Topman McNoise, no more virtual than virtuous, and no more virtuous than the vilest of that narrow room-ful of shoving, beef-faced Louts, to which you refer,— their honor bought and sold so many times o’er that no one bothers more to keep count.— Suggest you, Sir, even in Play, that this giggling Rout of poxy half-wits, embody us? Embody us? America but some fairy Emanation, without substance, that hath pass’d, by Miracle, into them?— Damme, I think not,— Hell were a better Destiny.
Someone brings up Sandwiches, and someone else a Bottle, and as night comes down over New-York like a farmer’s Mulch, sprouting seeds of Light, some reflected in the River, the Company, Mason working on in its midst, becomes much exercis’d upon the Topick of Representation. No taxation— — without it, yesyes but Drogo, lad, can you not see, even thro’ the Republican fogs which ever hang about these parts, that ’tis all a moot issue, as America has long been perfectly and entirely represented in the House of Commons, thro’ the principle of Virtual Representation? Cries of, Aagghh! and, That again? If this be part of Britain here, then so must be Bengal! For we have ta’en both from the French. We purchas’d India many times over with the Night of the Black Hole alone,— as we have purchas’d North America with the lives of our own. Are even village Idiots taken in any more by that empty cant? mutters the tiny Topman McNoise, no more virtual than virtuous, and no more virtuous than the vilest of that narrow room-ful of shoving, beef-faced Louts, to which you refer,— their honor bought and sold so many times o’er that no one bothers more to keep count.— Suggest you, Sir, even in Play, that this giggling Rout of poxy half-wits, embody us? Embody us? America but some fairy Emanation, without substance, that hath pass’d, by Miracle, into them?— Damme, I think not,— Hell were a better Destiny.
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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, Bleeding Edge, was published on September 17, 2013.