The NYT asked a number of people to share their favorite moments from Thomas Pynchon’s fiction. Yikes. I have so many. The problem is that not one of the greatest passages in his glorious body of work makes complete sense to out of its rich and densely-woven context. I’m gonna break the rules and choose two. Both concern rubbish — a topic in which I am greatly interested. The first is from my favorite Pynchon novel, Mason & Dixon: Does Britannia, when she sleeps, dream? Is America h...
