Seekers of the written word. By now, no doubt, your thoughts go to "parched" before "parchment" as I, your brother McPageturner has left your thirst unquenched like a prisoner of Zanzibar. Fear not, as my selection now will prove quickly consumed yet deliberate on the uptake, serving to simultaneously extinguish the desperately burning fires in the loins of your imagination while providing the long burning nourishment required by the intellect.

The photo accompanying this post should strike with immediate resonance in a true MOP, as a program with that particular style, wit and staying power is most certainly mandatory viewing for those moments when one's parchment is set on the side table in support of a brief diversion. Although our author was famously reclusive, he has voiced himself twice on the Simpsons and has appeared three times, always wearing a bag over his head to conceal his true identity. Our author, along with another celebrated MOP author Kurt Vonnegut, studied at Cornell University where he attended none other than Vladimir Nabokov's Literature 312 class. What a web the MOP spins

By now you are but a quick google search away so I'll spare further delay. Our author is Thomas Pynchon, and our book selection was written during a time where Pynchon wrote that "he was facing a creative crisis, with four novels in progress, announcing: "If they come out on paper anything like they are inside my head then it will be the literary event of the millennium"

Our selection is not the author's most celebrated work, though it has won the Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Foundation Award and appears on TIME's 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005, a completely arbitrary date range to be sure. It's a book Pynchon calls "a short story, but with gland trouble" which will only help to expedite our consumption and satisfy our eagerness to discuss parchment once more. With great anticipation I, Margraff Readie McPageturner, present to you our long overdue selection:

Thomas Pynchon

The Crying of Lot 49