The Book of Genesis (comics) was brought up Catholic, and thus is familiar with the more common Bible stories, but gave up the Catholic faith when he was 16. He went through a phase when he was 15 where he "[went] to church a lot, receiving communion, saying the Rosary, praying", but when he started to scrutinize it, "it just fell apart so quickly." Crumb says he is spiritual, gnostic, and not an atheist; he is "interested in pursuing and understanding the spiritual nature of things." He believes there is a God, but "I don't believe [the Book of Genesis is] the Word of God.
The Crying of Lot 49 real character's name," protests one reviewer. Pynchon disparaged this book, writing in the prologue to his 1984 collection "Slow Learner", "As is clear from the up-and-down shape of my learning curve, however, it was too much to expect that I'd keep on for long in this positive or professional direction. The next story I wrote was "The Crying of Lot 49", which was marketed as a 'novel', and in which I seem to have forgotten most of what I thought I'd learned up until then." As ever with Pynchon's writing, the labyrinthine plots offer myriad linked cultural references. Knowing these