8 May is universally recognised and celebrated as Pynchon in Public day. Parades fill the streets from Venice Beach to Vheissu; confetti pours from airships over all the world’s great capitals. In celebration of this grand holiday, I gathered some compadres to join Oedipa Maas and me for a whisky sour.

Boilermaker House whipped us up a batch of their somewhat unconventional whisky sours with passionfruit and beer (the recipe is here). The drinks came adorned with moustache patterns—I guess the bartenders couldn’t find their muted post-horn stencils.

Oedipa mixes a jug of (likely more straightforward) whisky sours while preparing for Mucho’s return from work on the afternoon she learns of Pierce’s will. On page 2 of the Vintage edition I just bought today when I realised my sister has and is probably dog-earing my old copy:

Oedipa had been named also to execute the will in a codicil dated a year ago. She tried to think back to whether anything unusual had happened around then. Through the rest of the afternoon, through her trip to the market in downtown Kinneret-Among-The-Pines to buy ricotta and listen to the Muzak (today she came through the bead-curtained entrance around bar 4 of the Fort Wayne Settecento Ensemble’s variorum recording of the Vivaldi Kazoo Concerto, Boyd Beaver, soloist); then through the sunned gathering of her marjoram and sweet basil from the herb garden, reading of book reviews in the latest Scientific American, into the layering of a lasagna, garlicking of a bread, tearing up of romaine leaves, eventually, oven on, into the mixing of the twilight’s whiskey sours against the arrival of her husband, Wendell (“Mucho”) Maas from work, she wondered, wondered …

Later (p. 6), home from work, Mucho “glid[es] like a large bird in an updraught towards the sweating shakerful of booze.” For them both perhaps, the drink is a last cool draught of pleasant routine before Oedipa is swept into the weird tangles of the Trystero.
Happy Pynchon in Public day all, and happy birthday Mr Pynchon! Try and squeeze out another book before the big eight zero hey?