‘The Simpsons’ character that Thomas Pynchon called “my role model”
As a society, we are obsessed with reclusive artists. Whether this be the original Pink Floyd leader Syd Barrett or Catcher in the Rye author JD Salinger, there’s no doubt that living out of the public eye adds an extra dose of fascination to an artist’s work. One of the most celebrated of these elusive geniuses is author Thomas Pynchon, a man as famed for his absence from public life as he is for his postmodern prose.
Notably, Pynchon is so reluctant to step out of the shadows that he did not attend the National Book Awards in 1974 to collect the prize for ‘Fiction’, an award he shared with Isaac Bashevis Singer’s A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories. Demonstrating the character that fuels his work, Pynchon sent an impersonator, comedian Irwin Corey, to the ceremony to pick up the award as a joke, where he accepted the ‘stipend’ on behalf of ‘Richard Python’.
Later, when a CNN camera crew caught Pynchon on film in 1997, he phoned the network and requested that they not air their footage. CNN, fully aware of the rare nature of having the reclusive author on the phone, asked him about his reclusiveness. “My belief is that ‘recluse’ is a codeword generated by journalists,” he said, “Meaning: ‘doesn’t like to talk to reporters’.”
The most famous recent example of Pynchon flirting with the spotlight occurred in 2004 when he appeared in two episodes of The Simpsons. As if it wasn’t clear from his National Book Awards stunt, Pynchon is a highly self-aware person, with his cartoon character wearing a paper bag over his head, referencing his reclusiveness.
Seeing Pynchon in The Simpsons was surprising in itself, but when the show’s executive producer, Matt Selman, shared the script adjustments made by the novelist on Twitter in 2014, things were taken to a whole new level. In his edits, Pynchon removed a reference to Homer Simpson’s “fat ass” because the character is, in his own words, his “role model”.
As Selman’s image showed, the author signed off his script edits as “Tom” with a kiss, with him making a “couple changes” to his lines via fax. The most fascinating is that he refused to say, “Marge is a great cook. No wonder Homer is such a fat ass” because of his love of Homer. He explained to Selman and his colleagues, “Sorry, guys. Homer is my role model, and I won’t speak ill of him”.
Elsewhere, he also included some characteristic puns. Instead of saying “scrumptious” when sampling Marge Simpson’s chicken wings, Pynchon changed it to “Yeah, Vi-licious!” referencing his novel V. Furthermore, in a nod to his novella The Crying of Lot 49, he added the quip: “And those potato pancakes of hers! I ate four dozen once and was suddenly inspired by the Frying of Latke 49.”
See a clip of Thomas Pynchon in The Simpsons, below.
