You might remember Thomas Pynchon from such acclaimed literary works Gravity’s Rainbow, V (not the one about alien lizards), and Inherent Vice. But who are we kidding? Odds are you recognize the name because he was on The Simpsons a couple of times. The author is famously reclusive—very few photographs of him exist, and his address and even hometown are well-guarded secrets—and as a nod to that, his two Simpsons appearances depicted him with a bag over his head.
As it turns out, Pynchon contributed more than an in-joke for English Lit majors. During last week’s Every Simpsons Ever marathon on FXX, Simpsons executive producer Matt Selman tweeted images of notes Pynchon made to the script for his second appearance, “All’s Fair In Oven War,” in which he casts a critical eye on Marge’s cooking (which he’d previously done for Marge’s writing). Pynchon contributes his own jokes—including a pun he made on his best-known work, The Frying Of Latke 49—and draws the line at calling Homer a “fat-ass.”
Pynchon’s Inherent Vice is being adapted by Paul Thomas Anderson and hits theaters this fall; The Simpsons just wrapped up its FXX marathon and the concurrently running “Okay, Enough With The Simpsons Quotes, Really,” marathon on your Twitter feed.
[via Wall Street Journal]