Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Pynchon | |
---|---|
Born | Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. May 8, 1937 Glen Cove, New York, U.S. |
Education | Cornell University (BA) |
Period | c. 1959–present |
Notable works |
|
Spouse |
Melanie Jackson (m. 1990) |
Children | 1 |
Signature | |
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. (/ˈpɪntʃɒn/ PIN-chon,[1][2] commonly /ˈpɪntʃən/ PIN-chən;[3] born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes, including history, music, science, and mathematics. For Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon won the 1973 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.[4]
Hailing from
Early life
Thomas Pynchon was born on May 8, 1937, in
Education and military career
A "voracious reader and precocious writer", Pynchon is believed to have skipped two grades before high school.[6] Pynchon attended Oyster Bay High School in Oyster Bay, where he was awarded "student of the year" and contributed short fictional pieces to his school newspaper. These juvenilia incorporated some of the literary motifs and recurring subject matter he would use throughout his career: oddball names, sophomoric humor, illicit drug use, and paranoia.[7][8][9][10]
Thomas Pynchon | |
---|---|
Allegiance | United States |
Branch | United States Navy |
Service years | 1955–1957 |
Service number | 4881936[11] |
Pynchon graduated from high school in 1953 at the age of 16. That fall, he went to
In 1957, Pynchon returned to Cornell to pursue a degree in English. His first published story, "The Small Rain", appeared in the Cornell Writer in March 1959, and narrates an actual experience of a friend who had served in the Army; subsequently, however, episodes and characters throughout Pynchon's fiction draw freely upon his own experiences in the Navy.[14] His short story, "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna", was published in the Spring 1959 issue of Epoch.[15]
While at Cornell, Pynchon started his friendships with
Career
Early career
V.
After leaving Cornell, Pynchon began to work on his first novel,
George Plimpton gave the book a positive review in The New York Times. He described it as a picaresque novel, in which "The author can tell his favorite jokes, throw in a song, indulge in a fantasy, include his own verse, display an intimate knowledge of such disparate subjects as physics, astronomy, art, jazz, how a nose-job is done, the wildlife in the New York sewage system. These indeed are some of the topics which constitute a recent and remarkable example of the genre: a brilliant and turbulent first novel published this month by a young Cornell graduate, Thomas Pynchon." Plimpton called Pynchon "a writer of staggering promise."[24]
After resigning from Boeing, Pynchon spent some time in New York and Mexico before moving to California, where he was reportedly based for much of the 1960s and early 1970s, most notably in an apartment in Manhattan Beach,[25] as he was composing what would become Gravity's Rainbow.
A negative aspect that Pynchon retrospectively found in the
In 1964, his application to study mathematics as a graduate student at the
From the mid-1960s Pynchon has also regularly provided
In 1968, Pynchon was one of 447 signatories to the "
The Crying of Lot 49
In an April 1964 letter to his agent, Candida Donadio, Pynchon wrote that he was facing a creative crisis, with four novels in progress, announcing: "If they come out on paper anything like they are inside my head then it will be the literary event of the millennium."[31]
In the mid-1960s, Pynchon lived at 217 33rd St. in Manhattan Beach, California, in a small downstairs apartment.[32]
In December 1965, Pynchon politely turned down an invitation from Stanley Edgar Hyman to teach literature at Bennington College, writing that he had resolved, two or three years earlier, to write three novels at once. Pynchon described the decision as "a moment of temporary insanity", but noted that he was "too stubborn to let any of them go, let alone all of them."[33]
Pynchon's second novel, The Crying of Lot 49, was published a few months later in 1966. Whether it was one of the three or four novels Pynchon had in progress is not known, but in a 1965 letter to Donadio, Pynchon had written that he was in the middle of writing a "potboiler". When the book grew to 155 pages, he called it, "a short story, but with gland trouble", and hoped that Donadio could "unload it on some poor sucker."[31]
The Crying of Lot 49 won the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award shortly after publication.
Gravity's Rainbow
Pynchon's most famous novel is his third,
The major portion of Gravity's Rainbow takes place in Europe in the final months of
Pynchon presents us with a Disney-meets-Bosch panorama of European politics, American entropy, industrial history, and libidinal panic which leaves a chaotic whirl of fractal patterns in the reader's mind.[45]
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.
–Gravity's Rainbow
The novel invokes anti-authority sentiments, often through violations of narrative conventions and integrity. For example, as the protagonist, Tyrone Slothrop, considers the fact that his own family "made its money killing trees", he apostrophizes his apology and plea for advice to the
Encyclopedic in scope and often self-conscious in style, the novel displays erudition in its treatment of an array of material drawn from the fields of psychology, chemistry, mathematics, history, religion, music, literature, human sexuality, and film. Pynchon wrote the first draft of Gravity's Rainbow in "neat, tiny script on engineer's quadrille paper".[40] Pynchon worked on the novel throughout the 1960s and early 1970s while he was living in California and Mexico City.
Gravity's Rainbow shared the 1974 National Book Award with A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer (split award).[4] That same year, the Pulitzer Prize For Fiction panel unanimously recommended Gravity's Rainbow for the award, but the Pulitzer board vetoed the jury's recommendation, describing the novel as "unreadable", "turgid", "overwritten", and in parts "obscene".[34] (No Pulitzer Prize For Fiction was awarded that year and finalists were not recognized before 1980.)[46] In 1975, Pynchon declined the William Dean Howells Medal.[47] Along with Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow was included on Time's list of the 100 greatest English-language novels published since the magazine's founding, with Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayao commenting on its "fantastic multitude of meditations upon the human need to build systems of intellectual order even as we use the same powers of intellect to hasten our destruction. (Did we mention that this is also a comedy, more or less?) Among American writers of the second half of the 20th century, Pynchon is the indisputed candidate for lasting literary greatness. This book is why."[48]
His earliest American ancestor, William Pynchon, emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony with the Winthrop Fleet in 1630, then became the founder of Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1636, and thereafter a long line of Pynchon descendants found wealth and repute on American soil. Aspects of Pynchon's ancestry and family background have partially inspired his fiction writing, particularly in the Slothrop family histories related in the short story "The Secret Integration" (1964) and Gravity's Rainbow (1973).[citation needed]
Later career
A collection of Pynchon's early short stories,
Vineland
Pynchon's fourth novel,
In 1988, he received a
Mason & Dixon
The meticulously researched novel is a sprawling postmodernist saga recounting the lives and careers of the English astronomer Charles Mason and his partner, the surveyor Jeremiah Dixon, the drawers of the Mason–Dixon line, during the birth of the American Republic. The dust jacket notes that it features appearances from George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Johnson and a talking dog. Some commentators acknowledged it as a welcome return to form; T. C. Boyle called it "the old Pynchon, the true Pynchon, the best Pynchon of all" and "a book of heart and fire and genius."[59] Michiko Kakutani called Mason and Dixon Pynchon's most human characters, writing that they "become fully fleshed-out people, their feelings, hopes and yearnings made as palpably real as their outrageously comic high jinks."[60] The American critic Harold Bloom hailed the novel as Pynchon's "masterpiece to date".[61] Bloom named Pynchon as one of the four major American novelists of his time, along with Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth and Don DeLillo.[62][63] For The Independent feature Book Of A Lifetime, Marek Kohn chose Mason & Dixon "precisely because my own teens were long gone by the time it came out: it showed me that being exhilarated by prose is not just an effect of youthful overexcitement."[64]
Against the Day
A variety of rumors pertaining to the subject matter of
In July 2006, a new, untitled novel by Pynchon was announced along with a description written by Pynchon himself: "Spanning the period between the
Against the Day was released on November 21, 2006, and is 1,085 pages long in the first edition hardcover. The book was given almost no promotion by Penguin and professional book reviewers were given little time in advance to review the book. An edited version of Pynchon's synopsis was used as the jacket-flap copy and Kovalevskaya does appear, although as only one of over a hundred characters.
Composed in part of a series of interwoven pastiches of popular fiction genres from the era in which it is set, the novel inspired mixed reactions from critics and reviewers. One reviewer remarked, "It is brilliant, but it is exhaustingly brilliant."[68] Other reviewers described Against the Day as "lengthy and rambling"[69] and "a baggy monster of a book",[70] while negative appraisals condemned the novel for its "silliness"[71] or characterized its action as "fairly pointless" and remained unimpressed by its "grab bag of themes".[72]
In 2006, Pynchon wrote a letter defending Ian McEwan against charges of plagiarism in his novel Atonement: "Oddly enough, those of us who write historical fiction do feel some obligation to accuracy. It is that Ruskin business about 'a capacity of responsiveness to the claims of fact, but unoppressed by them.' Unless we were actually there, we must turn to people who were, or to letters, contemporary reporting, the encyclopedia, the Internet, until, with luck, at some point, we can begin to make a few things of our own up. To discover in the course of research some engaging detail we know can be put into a story where it will do some good can hardly be classed as a felonious act-- it is simply what we do."[73]
Inherent Vice
Inherent Vice was published in August 2009.
A synopsis and brief extract from the novel, along with the novel's title, Inherent Vice, and dust jacket image, were printed in Penguin Press' Summer 2009 catalogue. The book was advertised by the publisher as "part-noir, part-psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon—private eye Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a cannabis haze to watch the end of an era as free love slips away and paranoia creeps in with the L.A. fog."
A promotional video for the novel was released by Penguin Books on August 4, 2009, with the character voiceover narrated by Pynchon himself.[74]
A 2014 film adaptation of the same name was directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.
Bleeding Edge
Bleeding Edge takes place in Manhattan's Silicon Alley during "the lull between the collapse of the dot-com boom and the terrible events of September 11." The novel was published on September 17, 2013,[75] to positive reviews.
Style
Poet L. E. Sissman wrote in The New Yorker: "He is almost a mathematician of prose, who calculates the least and the greatest stress each word and line, each pun and ambiguity, can bear, and applies his knowledge accordingly and virtually without lapses, though he takes many scary, bracing linguistic risks. Thus his remarkably supple diction can first treat of a painful and delicate love scene and then roar, without pause, into the sounds and echoes of a drugged and drunken orgy."[76]
Pynchon often engages in
Pynchon makes frequent
Themes
In her review of Mason & Dixon, Michiko Kakutani writes: "The Great Big Theme in all of Thomas Pynchon's novels, from V. (1963) through Gravity's Rainbow (1973) and Vineland (1990) has been: Is the world dominated by conspiracy or chaos? Are there patterns, secret codes, hidden agendas -- in short, a hidden design -- to the bubble and turmoil of human existence, or is it all a product of chance? Are the paranoiacs onto something, or do the nihilists have the key to it all?"[60]
Pynchon's work explores philosophical, theological, and sociological ideas exhaustively, though in quirky and approachable ways. His writings demonstrate a strong affinity with the practitioners and artifacts of
Pynchon makes frequent musical allusions. McClintic Sphere in
In his introduction to Slow Learner, Pynchon acknowledges a debt to the anarchic bandleader Spike Jones, and in 1994, he penned a 3,000-word set of liner notes for the album Spiked!, a collection of Jones's recordings released on the short-lived BMG Catalyst label.[84] Pynchon also wrote the liner notes for Nobody's Cool, the second album of indie rock band Lotion, in which he states that "rock and roll remains one of the last honorable callings, and a working band is a miracle of everyday life. Which is basically what these guys do." He is known to be a fan of Roky Erickson.[85]
Investigations and digressions into
The Crying of Lot 49 also alludes to entropy and
Influence
Precursors
Pynchon's novels refer overtly to writers as disparate as Henry Adams (in V., p. 62), Jorge Luis Borges (in Gravity’s Rainbow, p. 264), Deleuze and Guattari (in Vineland, p. 97),[86] Emily Dickinson (in Gravity’s Rainbow, pp. 27–8), Umberto Eco (in Mason & Dixon, p. 559),[87] Ralph Waldo Emerson (in Vineland, p. 369), "Hopkins, T. S. Eliot, di Chirico’s novel Hebdomeros" (in V., p. 307), William March[citation needed], Vladimir Nabokov (in The Crying of Lot 49, p. 120), Patrick O'Brian (in Mason & Dixon, p. 54), Ishmael Reed (in Gravity’s Rainbow, p. 558), Rainer Maria Rilke (in Gravity’s Rainbow, p. 97 f) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (in V., p. 278 f), and to a heady mixture of iconic religious and philosophical sources.[88][89][90][91]
Critics have made comparisons of Pynchon's writing with works by
Pynchon's work also has similarities with
Legacy
Pynchon's work has been cited as an influence and inspiration by many writers, among them Elfriede Jelinek (who translated Gravity's Rainbow into German), David Foster Wallace, William T. Vollmann, Richard Powers, Steve Erickson, David Mitchell, Neal Stephenson, Dave Eggers, William Gibson, T. C. Boyle, Salman Rushdie, Alan Moore, and Tommaso Pincio (whose pseudonym is an Italian rendering of Pynchon's name).[118]
Thanks to his influence on Gibson and Stephenson in particular, Pynchon became one of the progenitors of
The main-belt asteroid 152319 is named after Pynchon.[121]
Media scrutiny of private life
Relatively little is known about Pynchon's private life; he has carefully avoided contact with reporters for more than fifty years. Only a few photos of him are known to exist, nearly all from his high school and college days, and his whereabouts have often remained undisclosed.
A 1963 review of V. in The New York Times Book Review described Pynchon as "a recluse" living in Mexico, thereby introducing the media label with which journalists have characterized him throughout his career.[122] Nonetheless, Pynchon's personal absence from mass media is one of the notable features of his life, and it has generated many rumors and apocryphal anecdotes.
Pynchon wrote an introduction for his short story collection Slow Learner. His comments on the stories after reading them again for the first time in many years, and his recollection of the events surrounding their creation, amount to the author's only autobiographical comments to his readers.
1970s and 1980s
After the publication and success of Gravity's Rainbow, interest mounted in finding out more about the identity of the author. At the 1974 National Book Awards ceremony, the president of Viking Press, Tom Guinzberg, arranged for double-talking comedian "Professor" Irwin Corey to accept the prize on Pynchon's behalf.[26] Many of the assembled guests had no idea who Corey was and had never seen the author, so they assumed it was Pynchon himself on the stage delivering Corey's trademark torrent of rambling, pseudo-scholarly verbiage.[123] Toward the end of Corey's address a streaker ran through the hall, adding further to the confusion.
An article by John Batchelor published in the SoHo Weekly News in 1977 claimed that Pynchon was in fact J. D. Salinger.[124] Pynchon's written response to this theory said that “some of it was true, but none of the interesting parts. Not bad. Keep trying.”[116][125]
Thereafter, the first piece to provide substantial information about Pynchon's personal life was a biographical account written by a former Cornell University friend,
1990s
Pynchon does not like to talk with reporters, and refuses the spectacle of celebrity and public appearances. Some readers and critics have suggested that there were and are perhaps aesthetic (and ideological) motivations behind his choice to remain aloof from public life. For example, the protagonist in Janette Turner Hospital's short story "For Mr. Voss or Occupant" (published in 1991), explains to her daughter that she is writing
a study of authors who become reclusive. Patrick White, Emily Dickinson, J. D. Salinger, Thomas Pynchon. The way they create solitary characters and personae and then disappear into their fictions.[111]
More recently, book critic Arthur Salm has written that
the man simply chooses not to be a public figure, an attitude that resonates on a frequency so out of phase with that of the prevailing culture that if Pynchon and Paris Hilton were ever to meet—the circumstances, I admit, are beyond imagining—the resulting matter/antimatter explosion would vaporize everything from here to Tau Ceti IV.[127]
Pynchon has published a number of articles and reviews in the mainstream American media, including words of support for Salman Rushdie and his then-wife,
In 1990, Pynchon married his literary agent, Melanie Jackson—a great-granddaughter of Theodore Roosevelt and a granddaughter of Robert H. Jackson, U.S. Supreme Court Justice and Nuremberg trials prosecutor—and fathered a son, Jackson, in 1991.[130] The disclosure of Pynchon's 1990s location in New York City, after many years in which he was believed to be dividing his time between Mexico and northern California, led some journalists and photographers to try to track him down. Shortly before the publication of Mason & Dixon in 1997, a CNN camera crew filmed him in Manhattan. Angered by this invasion of his privacy, he called CNN asking that he not be identified in the footage of the street scenes near his home. When asked by CNN, Pynchon rejected their characterization of him as a recluse, remarking "My belief is that 'recluse' is a code word generated by journalists ... meaning, 'doesn't like to talk to reporters'." CNN also quoted him as saying, "Let me be unambiguous. I prefer not to be photographed."[131] The next year, a reporter for the Sunday Times managed to snap a photo of him as he was walking with his son.[132]
After several references to Pynchon's work and reputation were made on
Pynchon's insistence on maintaining his personal
In 1998, over 120 letters that Pynchon had written to his longtime agent, Candida Donadio, were donated by the family of a private collector, Carter Burden, to the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City. The letters ranged from 1963 to 1982, thus covering some of the author's most creative and prolific years. Although the Morgan Library originally intended to allow scholars to view the letters, at Pynchon's request the Burden family and Morgan Library agreed to seal these letters until after Pynchon's death.[31]
2000s
Responding to the image which has been manufactured in the media over the years, Pynchon made two cameo animated appearances on the television series The Simpsons in 2004. The first occurs in the episode "Diatribe of a Mad Housewife", in which Marge Simpson becomes a novelist. He plays himself, with a paper bag over his head, and provides a blurb for the back cover of Marge's book, speaking in a broad Long Island accent: "Here's your quote: Thomas Pynchon loved this book, almost as much as he loves cameras!" He then starts yelling at passing cars: "Hey, over here, have your picture taken with a reclusive author! Today only, we'll throw in a free autograph! But, wait! There's more!"[140][141] In his second appearance, in "All's Fair in Oven War", Pynchon's dialogue consists entirely of puns on his novel titles ("These wings are V-licious! I'll put this recipe in The Gravity's Rainbow Cookbook, right next to 'The Frying of Latke 49'."). The cartoon representation of Pynchon reappears in a third, non-speaking cameo, as a guest at the fictional WordLoaf convention depicted in the 18th season episode "Moe'N'a Lisa". The episode first aired on November 19, 2006, the Sunday before Pynchon's sixth novel, Against the Day, was released. According to Al Jean on the 15th season DVD episode commentary, Pynchon wanted to do the series because his son was a big fan.
During pre-production of "All's Fair in Oven War", Pynchon faxed one page from the script to producer Matt Selman with several handwritten edits to his lines. Of particular emphasis was Pynchon's outright refusal to utter the line "No wonder Homer is such a fat-ass." Pynchon's objection apparently had nothing to do with the salty language as he explained in a footnote to the edit, "... Homer is my role model and I can't speak ill of him."[142][143]
In celebration of the centenary of George Orwell's birth, Pynchon wrote a new foreword to Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. The introduction presents a brief biography of Orwell as well as a reflection on some of the critical responses to Nineteen Eighty-Four. Pynchon also offers his own reflection in the introduction that "what is perhaps [most] important, indeed necessary, to a working prophet, is to be able to see deeper than most of us into the human soul."[144]
In July 2006,
Shortly before Against the Day was published, Pynchon's prose appeared in the program for "The Daily Show: Ten Fu@#ing Years (The Concert)", a retrospective on Jon Stewart's comedy-news broadcast The Daily Show.[145]
On December 6, 2006, Pynchon joined a campaign by many other major authors to clear
Pynchon's 2009 YouTube promotional teaser for the novel Inherent Vice[147] is the second time a recording of his voice has been released to mainstream outlets (the first being his appearances on The Simpsons).[74]
2010s
In 2012, Pynchon's novels were released in e-book format, ending a long holdout by the author. Publisher Penguin Press reported that the novels' length and complex page layouts made it a challenge to convert them to a digital format. Though they had produced a promotional video for the June release, Penguin had no expectation Pynchon's public profile would change in any fashion.[148]
In 2013, his son, Jackson Pynchon, graduated from Columbia University, where he was affiliated with St. Anthony Hall.[149][150]
In September 2014, Josh Brolin told The New York Times that Pynchon had made a cameo in the Inherent Vice film adaptation. This led to a sizable online hunt for the author's appearance, eventually targeting actor Charley Morgan, whose small role as a doctor led many to believe he was Pynchon. Morgan, son of M*A*S*H's Harry Morgan, claimed that Paul Thomas Anderson, whom he described as a friend, had told him that such a cameo did not exist. Despite this, nothing has been directly confirmed by Anderson or Warner Bros. Pictures.[151][152]
On November 6, 2018, Pynchon was photographed near his apartment in New York's Upper West Side district when he went to vote with his son. The photo was published by the National Enquirer and was said to be the first photo of him "in decades".[153]
2020s
In December 2022, the Huntington Library announced that it had acquired the literary archive, including typescripts and drafts of each of Pynchon's novels, handwritten notes, correspondence with publishers, and research.[154]
Bibliography
- V. (1963)
- The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)
- Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
- Slow Learner (1984), collection of previously published short stories
- Vineland (1990)
- Mason & Dixon (1997)
- Against the Day (2006)
- Inherent Vice (2009)
- Bleeding Edge (2013)
See also
References
- ^ As pronounced by Pynchon himself: "Diatribe of a Mad Housewife". The Simpsons. Season 15. Episode 10. Fox. Thomas Pynchon (voiced by the real Thomas Pynchon): Here's your quote: 'Thomas Pynchon loved this book almost as much as he loves cameras.'.
- ^ Kachka, Boris (August 25, 2013). "On the Thomas Pynchon Trail: From the Long Island of His Boyhood to the 'Yupper West Side' of His New Novel". New York Magazine. Retrieved December 14, 2022.
- ^ "Pynchon". Dictionary.com. Archived from the original on January 20, 2015.
- ^ a b "1974 National Book Award winners". National Book Foundation. March 29, 2012. Archived from the original on March 24, 2019. (With essays by Casey Hicks and Chad Post from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog. The mock acceptance speech by Irwin Corey is not reprinted by NBF.)
- ISBN 978-0-521-76974-7.
- ^ a b c Kachka, Boris (August 25, 2013). "On the Thomas Pynchon Trail: From the Long Island of His Boyhood to the 'Yupper West Side' of His New Novel". Vulture. Archived from the original on February 18, 2020. Retrieved February 12, 2020.
- ^ His contributions to the Oyster High Purple & Gold were first reprinted on pp. 156–67 of Clifford Mead's Thomas Pynchon: A Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Materials (Dalkey Archive Press, 1989).
- ^ Pynchon, Thomas. "Voice of the Hamster". The Modern Word. Archived from the original on March 15, 2013. Retrieved September 26, 2014.
- ^ Pynchon, Thomas. "The Boys". The Modern Word. Archived from the original on March 15, 2013. Retrieved September 26, 2014.
- ^ Pynchon, Thomas. "Ye Legend of Sir Stupid and the Purple Knight". The Modern Word. Archived from the original on January 19, 2013. Retrieved September 26, 2014.
- ^ "National Archives National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) VIP list, 2009" (PDF). National Personnel Records Center. March 2008. Archived (PDF) from the original on November 27, 2021. Retrieved October 19, 2021 – via GovernmentAttic.org.
- ISBN 978-0-8203-3709-8.
- ISBN 978-0-521-76974-7.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-316-72442-5.
- ISSN 0264-0856
- ISBN 978-0-521-76974-7. Archivedfrom the original on February 7, 2023. Retrieved February 7, 2023.
- ^ Pynchon, Thomas (1983). Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me. pp. x–xi.
- ^ "Mimi & Richard Fariña - Celebrations For A Grey Day". Discogs. 1965. Archived from the original on May 29, 2023. Retrieved May 29, 2023.
- ^ Sweeney, Susan Elizabeth (June 25, 2008). "The V-Shaped Paradigm: Nabokov and Pynchon". Cycnos. 12. Archived from the original on July 19, 2009.
- ^ "Thomas Pynchon on 9/11: American literature's greatest conspiracy". The Independent. September 20, 2013. Archived from the original on May 7, 2022. Retrieved February 12, 2020.
- ^ Gibbs, Rodney (2004). "A Portrait of the Luddite as a Young Man". Denver Quarterly. 39 (1). Archived from the original on November 12, 2006.
- ^ Wisnicki, Adrian (2000). "A Trove of New Works by Thomas Pynchon? Bomarc Service News Rediscovered". Pynchon Notes. 46–49 (Spring 2000).
- ^ "National Book Awards – 1964" Archived April 15, 2021, at the Wayback Machine. National Book Foundation. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
- ^ Plimpton, George (April 23, 1963). "The Whole Sick Crew". The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 5, 2023. Retrieved April 8, 2023.
- ^ Frost, Garrison. "Thomas Pynchon and the South Bay". The Aesthetic. Archived from the original on March 6, 2003. Retrieved September 26, 2014.
- ^ a b Royster, Paul (June 23, 2005). "Thomas Pynchon: A Brief Chronology".
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires|journal=
(help) - ^ Pynchon, Thomas (June 12, 1966). "A Journey into the Mind of Watts". The New York Times Magazine. Archived from the original on February 19, 2006.
- ^ ""A Gift of Books" by Edward Albee, Joseph Heller, Alfred Kazin, Thomas Pynchon, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and others". Holiday. December 1965. Archived from the original on April 4, 2023. Retrieved April 17, 2023.
- ^ "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest Names". National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee. Archived from the original on September 9, 2014. Retrieved September 26, 2014.
- ^ "Books: A Myth of Alligators". Time. March 15, 1963.
- ^ a b c Gussow, Mel (March 4, 1998). "Pynchon's Letters Nudge His Mask". The New York Times. Archived from the original on August 19, 2014. Retrieved September 26, 2014.
- ^ Johnson, Ted (April 20, 1995). "A Tour De Force: From LAX Tower to 'Pulp Fiction' Diner to Stars' Hangouts, Pop Culture Landmarks Dot Landscape Here – Page 2". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on December 4, 2013. Retrieved August 21, 2013.
- ^ McLemee, Scott. "You Hide, They Seek". Inside Higher Ed. Archived from the original on April 3, 2015. Retrieved September 26, 2014.
- ^ a b Kihss, Peter (May 8, 1974). "Pulitzer Jurors Dismayed on Pynchon". The New York Times. Archived from the original on July 31, 2017. Retrieved September 19, 2017.
- ^ "Awards: Literature". American Academy of Arts and Letters. Archived from the original on January 14, 2022. Retrieved January 14, 2022.
- ISSN 0040-781X. Retrieved April 9, 2023.
- ISBN 978-0-253-32670-6.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8057-3960-2.
- ISBN 978-0-88233-405-9.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8203-1026-8.
- ^ Ruch, Allen. "Introduction to GR". The Modern Word. Archived from the original on September 15, 2010. Retrieved September 26, 2014.
- ^ Almansi, Guido (1994). L'estetica dell'osceno. Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi. p. 226.
- ISBN 978-0-415-04513-1.
- ^ Locke, Richard (March 11, 1973). "One of the Longest, Most Difficult, Most Ambitious Novels in Years". The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 16, 2023. Retrieved April 16, 2023.
- ISBN 978-0-631-21796-1.
- ^ "Fiction" Archived January 3, 2016, at the Wayback Machine. Past winners & finalists by category. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved March 29, 2012.
- S2CID 146989742.
- ISSN 0040-781X. Retrieved April 9, 2023.
- ^ Pynchon, Thomas (October 28, 1984). "Is It O.K. To Be A Luddite?". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 6, 2016. Retrieved October 24, 2016.
- ^ Pynchon, Thomas (April 10, 1988). "The Heart's Eternal Vow". The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 24, 2017. Retrieved February 13, 2017.
- ^ Pynchon, Thomas (June 6, 1993). "The Deadly Sins/Sloth; Nearer, My Couch, to Thee". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 1, 2017. Retrieved October 24, 2016.
- ^ "Words for Salman Rushdie". The New York Times. March 12, 1989. Archived from the original on April 4, 2023. Retrieved April 4, 2023.
- ^ {{Cite news author=last=Salman Rushdie |date=January 14, 1990 |title=Still Crazy After All These Years |work=The New York Times |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-vineland.html |access-date=January 5, 2023 |archive-date=November 1, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221101125235/https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-vineland.html |url-status=live }}
- ISBN 978-0-252-01919-7.
- ^ Gray, Paul (October 18, 1993). "Rooms of Their Own". Time Magazine. Archived from the original on August 14, 2014. Retrieved September 26, 2014.
- ISBN 978-0-7914-5193-9.
- ^ Rising, Malin (October 9, 2008). "Nobel literature: Will an American win after all?". USA Today. Archived from the original on September 23, 2015. Retrieved September 26, 2014.
- ^ "Blurbs From Thomas Pynchon". www.pynchon.pomona.edu. Archived from the original on April 19, 2023. Retrieved April 19, 2023.
- ^ Boyle, T. C. (May 18, 1997). "The Great Divide". The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 5, 2023. Retrieved January 5, 2023.
- ^ a b Kakutani, Michiko (April 29, 1997). "Pynchon Hits the Road With Mason and Dixon". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 20, 2023. Retrieved March 20, 2023.
- ISBN 978-0-7910-7030-7.
- ^ Pierce, Leonard (June 15, 2009). "Harold Bloom on Blood Meridian". The A.V. Club. Archived from the original on November 5, 2013. Retrieved August 27, 2013.
- ^ Bloom, Harold (September 24, 2003). "Dumbing down American readers". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on March 20, 2016. Retrieved September 23, 2015.
- ^ Kohn, Marek (June 4, 2010). "Book Of A Lifetime: Mason & Dixon, By Thomas Pynchon". The Independent. Archived from the original on April 25, 2023. Retrieved April 25, 2023.
- S2CID 196470810.
the latter contains a lot of mathematical material pertaining to Sofia Kovalevskaya and to Hilbert's school in Göttingen. Pynchon seemingly researched this material with the help of Michael Naumann,
- ^ Patterson, Troy (July 19, 2006). "The Pynchon Post". Slate. Archived from the original on September 14, 2014. Retrieved September 26, 2014.
- ^ Italie, Hillel (July 20, 2006). "New Thomas Pynchon Novel is on the way". Associated Press.
- ^ Leith, Sam (December 1, 2006). "Pinning down Pynchon". The Guardian. Archived from the original on September 28, 2014. Retrieved September 26, 2014.
- ^ Wood, Michael (January 4, 2007). "Humming along". London Review of Books. Vol. 29, no. 1. Archived from the original on October 3, 2014. Retrieved September 26, 2014.
- ^ Sante, Luc (January 11, 2007). "Inside the Time Machine". The New York Review of Books. Archived from the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved September 26, 2014.
- ^ Kirsch, Adam (November 15, 2006). "Pynchon: He Who Lives By the List, Dies by It". The New York Sun. Archived from the original on October 18, 2014. Retrieved September 26, 2014.
- ^ Miller, Laura (November 21, 2006). "The fall of the house of Pynchon". Salon.com. Archived from the original on October 17, 2014. Retrieved September 26, 2014.
- ^ Reynolds, Nigel (December 6, 2006). "Recluse speaks out to defend McEwan". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on February 27, 2018. Retrieved April 4, 2018.
- ^ a b Kurutz, Steven (August 11, 2009). "Yup, It's Him: A Pynchon Mystery Solved". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on February 2, 2015. Retrieved September 26, 2014.
- ^ Alden, William (February 25, 2013). "Pynchon Takes On Silicon Alley". DealBook. The New York Times. Archived from the original on July 7, 2013. Retrieved August 21, 2013.
- ^ Sissman, L.E. (May 19, 1973). "Hieronymus and Robert Bosch: The Art of Thomas Pynchon". The New Yorker.
- ^ Lane, Anthony (May 12, 1997). "Then, Voyager". The New Yorker.
- ^ "Postmodernism". postmodernblog.tumblr.com. Archived from the original on December 20, 2013. Retrieved August 21, 2013.
- ISBN 9780521769747. Archivedfrom the original on December 19, 2013. Retrieved August 21, 2013.
- JSTOR 20872015.
- ^ Gordon, Andrew (1994). The Vineland Papers.
- ISBN 978-0826206251.
- from the original on June 13, 2021. Retrieved June 13, 2021.
- ^ CD Album – Spike Jones – Spiked! Archived April 20, 2022, at the Wayback Machine at 45Worlds
- ^ Sales, Nancy (November 11, 1996). "Meet Your Neighbor, Thomas Pynchon". New York. Retrieved May 31, 2017.
- ^ Gazi, Jordan (2014). "On Deleuze and Guattari's Italian Wedding Fake Book: Pynchon, Improvisation, Social Organisation, and Assemblage". Orbit: A Journal of American Literature. 4 (2). Archived from the original on June 14, 2021. Retrieved June 14, 2021.
- from the original on June 13, 2021. Retrieved June 13, 2021.
- from the original on April 4, 2023. Retrieved June 14, 2021.
- from the original on June 14, 2021. Retrieved June 14, 2021.
- ^ JSTOR j.ctt46n5bh. Archivedfrom the original on June 14, 2021. Retrieved June 14, 2021.
- ^ Smith, Jared (2014). "All Maps Were Useless – Resisting Genre and Recovering Spirituality in Pynchon's Against the Day". Orbit: A Journal of American Literature. 2 (2). Archived from the original on June 14, 2021. Retrieved June 14, 2021.
- ^ from the original on June 24, 2021. Retrieved June 20, 2021.
- ISBN 978-1-4426-4801-2. Archived from the originalon December 4, 2020. Retrieved June 20, 2021.
- from the original on June 21, 2021. Retrieved June 20, 2021.
- from the original on June 25, 2021. Retrieved June 20, 2021.
- JSTOR j.ctv4rfsgd. Archivedfrom the original on June 25, 2021. Retrieved June 20, 2021.
- from the original on June 25, 2021. Retrieved June 20, 2021.
- ^ Hashhozheva, Galena (2008). "The Mittelwerke: Site–Para-site–Non-site". Pynchon Notes (54–5): 137–53. Archived from the original on June 24, 2021. Retrieved June 20, 2021.
- ^ Min, Hye Sook (2003). "The Pyncheons of The House of the Seven Gables: Questing after Thomas Pynchon". Journal of English and American Studies. 2: 121–33.
- ^ Madsen, Deborah Lea (2008). "Pynchon and the Tradition of American Romance". In Schaub, T.H. (ed.). Approaches to Teaching Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and Other Works. Modern Language Association, New York. pp. 25–30. Archived from the original on June 24, 2021. Retrieved June 20, 2021.
- ISBN 978-0292741508.
- from the original on June 25, 2021. Retrieved June 20, 2021.
- ISBN 9780231147323. Archivedfrom the original on June 24, 2021. Retrieved June 20, 2021.
- doi:10.16995/pn.458. Archivedfrom the original on June 24, 2021. Retrieved June 20, 2021.
- from the original on June 25, 2021. Retrieved June 20, 2021.
- from the original on June 25, 2021. Retrieved June 20, 2021.
- from the original on June 30, 2021. Retrieved June 20, 2021.
- from the original on June 24, 2021. Retrieved June 20, 2021.
- ^ ISBN 978-0520045378.
- ISBN 9780203479681. Archivedfrom the original on June 24, 2021. Retrieved June 20, 2021.
- ^ a b Hospital, Janette Turner (1995). Collected Stories: 1970 To 1995. pp. 361–2.
- ^ Burdett, Lorraine (2001). "Synthetics Surveillance and Sarsaparilla: Patrick White and the New Gossip Economy". Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature. Special conference issue: Australian Literature in a Global World edited by Wenche Ommundsen and Tony Simoes da Silva. Archived from the original on June 24, 2021. Retrieved June 20, 2021.
- from the original on June 24, 2021. Retrieved June 20, 2021.
- ^ Peirce, Carol Marshall (1982). "Pynchon's V. and Durrell's Alexandria Quartet: A Seminar in the Modern Tradition". Pynchon Notes. 8: 23–29.
- ^ Porush, David (1994). ""The Hacker We Call God": Transcendent Writing Machines in Kafka and Pynchon". Pynchon Notes. 34–35: 129–47.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-416-31670-4.
- ^ Brook, Thomas (1983). "What's the Point? On Comparing Joyce and Pynchon". Pynchon Notes. 11: 44–48.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on January 24, 2018. Retrieved January 24, 2018.from the original on January 24, 2018. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
- Guardian (October 7, 2015). "William Gibson: 'I Was Losing A Sense of How weird the real world was'". The Guardian.
- "A for Alan Moore — Mousse Magazine and Publishing". December 2013. Archived from the original on March 20, 2020. Retrieved March 20, 2020.
- "TOILET BOWLS IN GRAVITY'S RAINBOW". Tommaso Pincio Post (in Italian). February 24, 2013. Archived from the original on January 25, 2018. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
- Anders, Charlie Jane. "A new crop of literary novels explores our internet dystopia". io9. Archived from the original on January 24, 2018. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
- "The Believer – The Romantic Fabulist Predicts a Dreamy Apocalypse". The Believer. June 1, 2003. Archived
The fax sent to us by Thomas Pynchon with his jokes written on the script page
Further reading
- Kharpertian, Theodore D. Thomas Pynchon and Postmodern American Satire pp. 20–2, in Kharpertian A Hand to Turn the Time: The Menippean Satires of Thomas Pynchon.
- McHale, Brian (1981), Thomas Pychon: A Portrait of the Artist as a Missing Person. ISSN 0264-0856
- Stevenson, Randall (1983). Review of The Small Rain. Cencrastus, No. 11 (New Year 1983), pp. 40 & 41, ISSN 0264-0856
External links
- The following links were last verified on May 31, 2017.
- Inherent Vice Diagrammed A reader's guide to Pynchon's novel Inherent Vice, with diagrams showing all the character relationships, a character-relationship index, and chapter and plot summaries.
- Works by or about Thomas Pynchon at Internet Archive
- Thomas Pynchon at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Thomas Pynchon – ThomasPynchon.com
- The Thomas Pynchon Wiki
- Pynchon Notes, a journal operated from 1979 and 2009 by the Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, archived by the Open Library of Humanities.
- Pynchon in Public Podcast, a podcast going through each of Pynchon's novels, one episode at a time.
- Spermatikos Logos - Thomas Pynchon on The Modern Word