like you said, pubrick, asking someone to explain pynchon here is like someone here being asked by a literature person to explain pta -- mm-hmm. no but seriously. pynchon is a modern knight of literature, and he lived in manhattan beach (a lil south of la) for several years, is talked about in la sometimes (in order to talk about la)(and he has ucla/usc classes of course), and i've heard mark danielewski say pynchon was against movies in the 70s, and danielewski complained about inherent vice being made (i became frustrated irl, and danielewski probably google tags his own name, sorry dude, true story).
pynchon is reclusive like sallinger was, provides comedy like heller does (wait, is heller dead? i should google), and he has intellectual densities that would make him a good topic with gaddis. so pubrick threw down good pubrick names. and like them, pynchon has his individual rep
most of his life is a secret, but a story i've heard is that one day, while living in manhattan beach, he went into the street in a party way and handed everyone in the street a pie and there was a pie throwing party. it's the only classic pynchon irl story i know and like
