Famous (and famously media-shy) author Thomas Pynchon loves The Simpsons. Last week during the Simpsons big marathon–the show’s on FXX, haven’t you heard?–exec producer Matt Selman shared a fax Pynchon once sent the show. The Pynchon character appeared in an episode on Simpsons season 17, where he eats Marge’s chicken wings.
The script originally called for the famous writer (The Crying Lot of 49, V.) to pretty much say Homer’s ass was fat. Pynchon, as evidenced by his faxed edits, couldn’t do it. Pynchon wrote: “Sorry guys, Homer is my role model and I can’t speak ill of him.” The devotion may be surprising to some–Pynchon is a high-brow hero. But he’s also a first-rate humorist in his own right. Besides Homer Simpson has a precursor in American literature–the character Homer Simpson is an important one in Nathanael West’s classic The Day of the Locust
The fax sent to us by Thomas Pynchon with his jokes written on the script page pic.twitter.com/wL8Nm6R92I
— Matt Selman (@mattselman) August 28, 2014
