Thomas Pynchon Quote

They are examin’d skeptickally. Not from the Press, are you? ’Pon my Word, cry both Surveyors at once. Drummers of some kind’s my guess, puts in a Countryman, his Rifle at his Side, am I right, Gents? What’ll we say? mutters Mason urgently to Dixon. Oh, do allow me, says Dixon to Mason. Adverting to the Room, Why aye, Right as a Right Angle, we’re out here to ruffle up some business with any who may be in need of Surveying, London-Style,— Astronomickally precise, optickally up-to-the-Minute, surprisingly cheap. The Behavior of the Stars is the most perfect Motion there is, and we know how to read it all, just as you’d read a Clock-Face. We have Lenses that never lie, and Micrometers fine enough to subtend the Width of a Hair upon a Martian’s Eye-ball. This looks like a bustling Town, plenty of activity in the Land-Trades, where think yese’d be a good place to start? with an amiability that Mason recognizes as peculiarly Quaker,— Friendly Business.

Thomas Pynchon

They are examin’d skeptickally. Not from the Press, are you? ’Pon my Word, cry both Surveyors at once. Drummers of some kind’s my guess, puts in a Countryman, his Rifle at his Side, am I right, Gents? What’ll we say? mutters Mason urgently to Dixon. Oh, do allow me, says Dixon to Mason. Adverting to the Room, Why aye, Right as a Right Angle, we’re out here to ruffle up some business with any who may be in need of Surveying, London-Style,— Astronomickally precise, optickally up-to-the-Minute, surprisingly cheap. The Behavior of the Stars is the most perfect Motion there is, and we know how to read it all, just as you’d read a Clock-Face. We have Lenses that never lie, and Micrometers fine enough to subtend the Width of a Hair upon a Martian’s Eye-ball. This looks like a bustling Town, plenty of activity in the Land-Trades, where think yese’d be a good place to start? with an amiability that Mason recognizes as peculiarly Quaker,— Friendly Business.

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About Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. ( PIN-chon, commonly PIN-chən; born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes, including history, music, science, and mathematics. For Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon won the 1974 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American novelists.
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.