User:Sideming
A partial newbie to Pynchon: I've readGR 3 times, Crying of Lot 49 twice, Vineland once, got halfway through MD (the mechanical duck found my off switch) and I am now a third of the way through V. and my second round of AtD.
An economist by training, my current interests are Sanskrit/Jyotish and Proust. I also have an MDiv -- but do not practice.
Si_de_ming is my Chinese name from college, when I studied the language. Though I myself am not Chinese. For the exact reasons Pynchon mentions in AtD, my nickname was "Mr. Death."
I am becomming ever more to seeing AtD as a modern day alchemical work -- something like a more understandable Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.