NYTimes 10/2/2025 on the occasion of the the publication of Pynchon’s new book: “Shadow Ticket?
LISA: Dad, did you read “Gravity’s Rainbow” yet, the Thomas Pynchon masterpiece? He’s what I want to be when I grow up — a famous literary recluse. Just imagine being speculated about by the most consequential people in the world: English literature grad students.
HOMER: Sweetie, I really wanted to read it. But you know I don’t like to read. My eyes get so tired going right, right, right, then, ugh … left. Plus from the title I thought “Gravity’s Rainbow” would be about Skittles. It didn’t seem to be, so I took a break about halfway through.
LISA: You made it halfway through the book?
HOMER: Halfway through the first line.
LISA: OK, I thought you might struggle with it, so I got you a pop-up version too.
HOMER: Sorry, pop-up books are way too hard. If something’s going to pop up at me it better be from a toaster. Plus you have to figure out how to get the pages to lie back down flat again. I’m no engineer.
LISA: I thought you were a nuclear engineer.
HOMER: That’s more about pushing buttons. Or not pushing buttons. I can’t remember which. So if you had to choose a passage from the book to appear in The New York Times, what would it be?
LISA: It would have to be this quote about power in America: “All the animals, the plants, the minerals, even other kinds of men, are being broken and reassembled every day, to preserve an elite few …”
HOMER: Interesting. Did you know there’s a green Skittle? Do you think this Pynchon guy knows what it tastes like?
LISA: Another great conversation, Dad.