As an argentinian, I'm amazed by how much Pynchon knows about my country
I've been reading Gravity's Rainbow for a little over a month and I'm currently trying to finish the third part. As stated in the title, it is amazing to me how Pynchon is able to talk about Argentinian authors like Borges, Lugones, and Hernández with such deep knowledge. He also compares Perón with Rosas and talks about los descamisados. Beyond that, he even knows the way gauchos talked. I'm sure most Argentinians nowadays don't know some of the words El Ñato says. How was a North American writer in the seventies aware of them?
I'm used to watching media that portrays Argentina or Latin America completely wrongly, or with a very surface-level understanding, so this is very surprising to me. Based on that, I'm willing to take anything he says about Central Asian tribes, or any other culture, as fact.