True Story.
Apparently Thomas Pynchon, the legendary recluse who’s only ever seen in the flesh by his wife and his agent, is a total foodie and a serious Mario Batali fan, and as it turns out Pynchon’s wife and Batali’s wife have the same OB-GYN, and when Pynchon’s wife was about to deliver the doctor refused to cut any cords without the father-to-be in the room and despite the pleadings of his wife Pynchon’s attendance was mandated and, upon learning of the doctor’s association, Pynchon used his new intermediary to arrange a lunch date with Batali, increasing by 150% (if one counts the newborn Pynchon) in a single afternoon the number of people who’d laid eyes on Pynchon over the prior two decades.
Something about this story strikes me as the kind of yarn that might show up in a Pynchon novel.
