In seeking to substantiate strange rumors about Pynchon's life I have succeeded only in uncovering new ones. But what did I expect really?
Had he been a member of the Residents? Was Gravity's Rainbow the product of a walkabout in Mexico and informed by little more than a decrepit model kit and a book about swine? Had it been written on graph paper with one character per square? Where would I find my answers?
Before I tell you, I just want you to know that you may really be risking something here, even more than by reading one of Pynchon's books in the first place. These people. . . they're crazy. And maybe you dropped V. before it drove you there, or maybe you are like me and your ignorance seemed to keep you afloat like a life vest in an endless sea until you were picked up by putting it down.
Anyway, go to http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_intro.html, and ask why they call his work a Spermatikos Logos, and why the bio is written in prose more spastic than that of the author himself, ask what they do at their celestial Pynchon gatherings and whether or not the Great Quail is in fact Pynchon himself. If it's true that you never get to touch the Master, this is definitely the place to start tickling his creatures.
But although the site is chock full of info, it did not answer the most burning question I had. Apparently some sick grad student got his hands on the manuscript of Gravity's Rainbow, which the site verifies was written on a quadrille pad, and entered it tit for tat into a computer. He then calculated the median. Since the total number of characters happened to be even the computer spit out the two letters on either side of the line: n/t. The grad student looked up the spot in the book, or maybe called it up on the screen and found an impossible joke had been played on humanity. The n and t had come from the word 'center'.
The answer might be in there somewhere, but I'm afraid to go back.