Jules Siegel, Pynchon's college friend and roommate, once wrote that "...you have to accept the fact that Tom’s grasp of things that he glibly sets down as if he were a master of the material is usually quite superficial, based on reading anything from, say, Bible Comics to learned journals. This is not a criticism, but a description."

Of course, Siegel was maybe not the most reliable informant, given that Pynchon also famously slept with his wife.