I'm curious, do you think he has a job?
Authors like Pynchon and DeLillo are obviously revered, but they're not hit writers by any means. How do they make a living? People like Gass/DFW/Junot Diaz/etc. all have university teaching jobs.
How does this guy pay the bills? Is it weird to ask that?
>select all images with a store front
>Pay
>Bills
They're not at Stephen King or J.K. Rowling levels, but they still sell quite a bit of books. They can live.
If you live modestly a few million can go a long way.
Paying bills isn't that hard if you've been dead since way back in the seventies.
>not hit writers
What makes you say this? Their works are all over pop book stores.
Also, in Pynchon's case, even if he didn't make a cent, he'd be fine financially because of his wife.
Dellilo was basically a mangaka. He pumped up so so selling shit for years. The pynch lives off genius award grants
He got a MacArthur Fellowship in the 80s. A dude as smart as Pynchon can make that go a long way.
And GR was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Any academic or college graduates with a hard-on for bookshelves is going to have bought a Pynchon novel at one point or another.
Plus there's the movie. Plus there's the fact that he's from a well-known, wealthy East Coast American family. He went to Cornell for christ sakes. You know who they let into Cornell in the 50s? RICH WHITE KIDS WITH FUNKY TEETH
At the very least Libra and Underworld were best sellers which nets anywhere from a few hundred thousand to a few mil.
Dude, you can buy Pynchon in book stores here in germany. I am sure he gets enough money for an apartment.
Thomas Pynchon can't make a living off of book sales? Are you retarded?
they're professional writers
are you fucking retarded?
they're two of the greatest writers of the 20th century
>they're professional writers
That doesn't mean much - see
theguardian.com
Having said that, acclaimed writers whose work is decades old and still selling are probably going to be alright. But writers who are only recently acclaimed, without those decades... not necessarily.
>theguardian.com
ok, but this is don delillo and thomas pynchon, two of the greatest writers of the 20th century. their books are classics that have won many awards, and i'm sure that they are given grants by institutions to fund their writing for the betterment of humanity. pynchon hopefully made at least a little money from inherent vice, and delillo hopefully makes some money from talks or what have you. i'm sure they're both fairly well-off. their books, being classics, get republished fairly often, are sold at most bookstores, etc
Oh yeah, I agree- they're sufficiently established. Just saying don't assume that 'professional writers'- including ones who have won awards - necessarily make enough money to actually live on.
DeLillo got a one million dollar advance for underworld for what it's worth
dumbass
the illuminati finance any writers who promote their message. he doesn't have to 'work'.
I mean they're not exactly household names, but Pynchon and Delillo can be found in any bookstore worldwide. Not to mention they're still reasonably active, meaning advances. As long as they aren't living extravagantly, I'm sure they're doing just fine.
He had Inherent Vice made into a movie, wrote some damn good books, and sold quite a few.
I remember reading not long ago that Infinite Jest had only sold 200 to 250 thousand copies to date.
Pynchon gets all his money from the government because he's a paid shill
Pynchon was big in the 60s-70s so assuming he didn't blow most of that cash, he should be fine.
yeah DFW got a genius grant and still had to teach (which he hated and thought was ruining his writing). It's not like someone giving you $50k a year for 10 years or whatever it's up to now gets you set for life
Pynchon and Delillo are both comfortable now from selling books over their lives. What'd be interesting is to know what Pynchon did in the early V/Lot 49/GR days when he was mostly a cult writer (if that). I know Delillo was poor as fuck and basically lived in squalor while he wrote his first book.
>What'd be interesting is to know what Pynchon did in the early V/Lot 49/GR days when he was mostly a cult writer (if that)
He traveled a lot and hung around at friend's houses.
Here's a nice article with some cool Pynchon stories:
vulture.com
Go back to /x/ and stay.
>DeLillo was poor as fuck and lived in squalor while he wrote his first book
Here's the first paragraph of his short story "The Starveling"
>When it started, long before the woman, he lived in one room. He did not hope for improved circumstances. This was where he belonged, single window, shower, hotplate, a squat refrigerator parked in the bathroom, a makeshift closet for scant possessions. There is a kind of uneventfulness that resembles meditation. One morning he sat drinking coffee and staring into space when the lamp that extended from the wall rustled into flame. Faulty wiring, he thought calmly, and put out his cigarette. He watched the flames rise, the lampshade begin to bubble and melt. The memory ended here.
I would never think of DeLillo as putting himself into his stories but I can't help but feel after reading a lot of his work that the guy has definitely dealt with some shit. Like the type of shit that someone who spends sixteen hours/day reading and writing all by themselves for decades goes through.
where the fuck do i sign
Pynchon and DeLillo surely make and have made plenty of money from their works.
Besides that, they're like 80 years old. Even if they used to have "normal jobs", they'd probably have retired by now.