
Did Thomas Pynchon Publish a Novel Under the Pseudonym Adrian Jones Pearson? - samclemens
http://harpers.org/blog/2015/09/the-fiction-atop-the-fiction/
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firebones
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.

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tedunangst
"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?

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

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dfan
The author presents basically no evidence for this hypothesis.

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zygomega
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.

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dfan
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.

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davisclark
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...](http://genius.com/Thomas-pynchon-voice-of-the-hamster-annotated)).
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?

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dfan
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.

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ChuckFrank
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.

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savanaly
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 ;)

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JadeNB
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.

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spacehome
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.

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ninguem2
Spotted the Bayesian.

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spacehome
Umm, I guess?

What are the alternatives?

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JadeNB
Frequentist?
[http://www.austincc.edu/mparker/stat/nov04/talk_nov04.pdf](http://www.austincc.edu/mparker/stat/nov04/talk_nov04.pdf)

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

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JadeNB
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).

