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The arcane theological dispute concerned the precise meaning of Jesus’ suffering during crucifixion, which Pynchon wrote was not the true source of sinners’ redemption — the larger example of the prophet’s life was.

American novelist Thomas Pynchon called it “a piece of working magic, warm, funny and sane.”

It might be loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s joyous blast of a novel, “Vineland.”

It projected him into the ranks of the country’s most innovative writers, drawing comparisons to contemporaries like Thomas Pynchon, Jorge Luis Borges and Vladimir Nabokov.

Seidler, who was born in 1937 in Britain, moved to the U.S. in the early days of World War II. He attended Cornell University, where he was friends with writer Thomas Pynchon.