Famous Losers

In life some of us seek to be big move stars that walk down the read carpet, or some seek to be a big time author winning big awards like the Pulitzer Prize. But what makes them so great is the work they do, not really who they are as a person. They could be real losers, they could be druggies, they could be the most normal down to earth person ever; yet, most of us will just never know. Andrew Gordon wrote a piece on how Thomas Pynchon was this great American novelist and then when he finally met him, he realized he's just like a normal person. When Gordon first met Pynchon the first thing he said was, "Hey man, would you like a joint?" Then he pulled out a string of firecrackers and said, "Where can we blow this up at?" Although Gordon doesn't admit it, but I think he was surprised at how careless and free he was. It was like two different parts of the culture of the time were meeting. Gordon was an English major from Berkley and then you have this writer who smokes pot and is just hanging out, meeting not really having anything in common besides their writings.
I think a lot of the time we have to sit back and think that these famous people do have outside lives and they're for the most part normal people like you and me. Its not always just hard work, sometimes they have to relax and smoke a blunt. Maybe Pynchon should have had some type of professionalism about him but at the same time, it could just be the hippie in him. Gordon said that he was inspired by his "epic, wild imagination", and that he was very "profound...complex and allusive", I laughed because its probably all due in part to the pot and LSD.