Did Thomas Pynchon Publish a Novel Under the Pseudonym Adrian Jones Pearson? | Hacker News Reader

Did Thomas Pynchon Publish a Novel Under the Pseudonym Adrian Jones Pearson?

harpers.org

37 pointssamclemens27 comments

What better way to generate buzz for your unnoticed novel than to spread a rumor it was penned by a literary luminary, watch it climb the charts as people buy it to "decide for themselves", and then get your 15 minutes of fame as you sheepishly out yourself as the true author who, aw shucks, is just a simple small college professor caught up in this literary whirlwind.

"So much effort goes into credentialing the creator that we lose sight of the creation itself"

Uhm, yes. So now you're here to accomplish what again? This is a strange article. Pynchon (or whoever) went to some effort to publish a book not attached to his name, and all you want to do is attach his name to the book?

There's a humorous fake website for the community college referenced in the book: http://www.coweye.org/

The author presents basically no evidence for this hypothesis.

The evidence is the quoted prose, which is in the style of Pynchon. If the rest of the book maintains that perspective and entertains me in the manner I expect from Pynchon (as apparently it did the reviewer), then I'll be happy to have read the book regardless of who the "real" author is.

I read little fiction but I read whatever Pynchon produces, because, since high school, I've always enjoyed his work. That is what the name "Pynchon" means to me: a certain manner of story telling which illuminates the distant (or recent) past through idiosyncratic distortions and personalities. Unless the reviewer has a sharply different experience of Pynchon's style than mine, I will be happy reading this book.

I disagree. The evidence in quotation, plot detail and story-line convinced me it was either Pynchon or a brilliant mimic. None else does it like this.

Try reading the first few pages: http://www.amazon.com/Cow-Country-Adrian-Jones-Pearson-ebook...

This reads nothing like Pynchon.

I agree that the author of the article managed to convey a different impression quite successfully.

I've read all of Pynchon's books and a lot of books whose authors were clearly inspired by Pynchon, and I don't see any reason to assume this doesn't fall into the latter category, especially after reading a few pages online. For one thing, I think it would be the first Pynchon novel written in the first person. The prose also seems markedly less lyrical than Pynchon's.

I mean, if Pynchon put his name on this, I wouldn't say, "I disbelieve this, he must be attaching his name to someone else's work," but I would say, "Huh, he really changed up his style for this one." But he didn't put his name on this.

Pynchon wrote several short stories in highschool in the first person. See Voice of the Hamster (http://genius.com/Thomas-pynchon-voice-of-the-hamster-annota...). I find the similarities between this story and Cow Country interesting (as it takes place at Hamster High.) Dr. Felch would fit right in.

In addition, Pynchon's style of narration employs so much free indirect speech that it often begs to become first person.

What did you say when Mason & Dixon was published?

I said, "Huh, he really changed up his style for this one." It did have the same lyrical qualities as his other work, though. More importantly, it had his name rather than someone else's on the cover, which slightly increased my prior for whether he wrote it or not.

> None else does it like this.

...except for writers that DO write like pynchon (e.g. DFW, Bolaño, Gaddis, Barth, though none of them would HAVE to to imitate him). Pynchon is distinctive but hardly unique.

Suppose one of those five (or others with which you are familiar) was the "actual" author of Cow Country. Who would you guess it was, based on the Amazon preview?

Honestly the preview doesn't read to me like any of them, Pynchon included. When I tried to think of a name that I wouldn't be surprised to see on the cover, the first one that came to mind was Austin Grosmman.

I am not saying that he wrote it! Just that the style of this book (based on a few pages) is much closer to his (and many other writers of his generation) than to Pynchon's.

According to Linander’s law of headlines, the answer to this polar Yes/No questions would be equal to a coin toss. So maybe yes, and maybe no.

If only we had some technology that could help...

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/software-helps-iden...

But in this particular case, the answer is either yes with 100% probability or no with 100% probability, depending on whether it was written by Pynchon or not ;)

But that's like saying that the odds of winning the lottery are that you win with 100% probability or you lose with 100% probability, depending on whether your numbers match or not.

Yes, probabilities are not statements about the world; they're statements about your knowledge of the world. As you gain knowledge, the probabilities (as far as you can compute) change. This is also how different people can compute different probabilities for the same event.

Spotted the Bayesian.

Umm, I guess?

What are the alternatives?

Frequentist? http://www.austincc.edu/mparker/stat/nov04/talk_nov04.pdf

I find it difficult to believe that Bayesian and Frequentist exhaust the space of possible hypotheses.

I didn't mean to suggest that they did; but you asked for alternatives, and frequentism is one (even if perhaps not the only one).

That is a brilliant observation that I shall abuse frequently. Nicely complements my preferred "statistics mean nothing when they happen to you."

'Brilliant' is overselling it—it's just an update of the old joke "this chuck is 50% rabbit meat; I make it with one rabbit and one horse"—but thanks!

Not if only half of it is written by Pynchon.

But according to Betteridge's law we should answer "no."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

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