Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Pynchon, (b. May 8, 1937, Glen
Cove, Long Island, N.Y., U.S.), American
novelist and short-story writer whose
works combine black humour and fantasy
to depict human alienation in the chaos
of modern society.
After earning his B.A. in English from
Cornell University in 1958, Pynchon
spent a year in Greenwich Village
writing short stories and working on a
novel. In 1960 he was hired as a
technical writer for Boeing Aircraft
Corporation in Seattle, Wash. Two years
later he decided to leave the company
and write full-time. In 1963 Pynchon won
the Faulkner Foundation Award for his
first novel, V. (1963), a whimsical,
cynically absurd tale of a middle-aged
Englishman’s search for “V,” an elusive,
supernatural adventuress appearing in
various guises at critical periods in
European history. In his next book, The
Crying of Lot 49 (1966), Pynchon
described a woman’s strange quest to
discover the mysterious, conspiratorial
Tristero System in a futuristic world of
closed societies. The novel serves as a
condemnation of modern
industrialization.
Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) is a
tour de force in 20th-century
literature. In exploring the dilemmas of
human beings in the modern world, the
story, which is set in an area of
post-World War II Germany called “the
Zone,” centres on the wanderings of an
American soldier who is one of many odd
characters looking for a secret V-2
rocket that will supposedly break
through the Earth’s gravitational
barrier when launched. The narrative is
filled with descriptions of obsessive
and paranoid fantasies, ridiculous and
grotesque imagery, and esoteric
mathematical and scientific language.
For his efforts Pynchon received the
National Book Award, and many critics
deemed Gravity’s Rainbow a visionary,
apocalyptic masterpiece. Pynchon’s next
novel, Vineland—which begins in 1984 in
California—was not published until 1990.
Two vast, complex historical novels
followed: in Mason & Dixon (1997), set
in the 18th century, Pynchon took the
English surveyors Charles Mason and
Jeremiah Dixon as his subject, while
Against the Day (2006) moves from the
World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893
through World War I. Inherent Vice
(2009), Pynchon’s rambling take on the
detective novel, returns to the
California counterculture milieu of
Vineland.
Of his few short stories, most notable
are “Entropy” (1960), a neatly
structured tale in which Pynchon first
uses extensive technical language and
scientific metaphors, and “The Secret
Integration” (1964), a story in which
Pynchon explores small-town bigotry and
racism. The collection Slow Learner
(1984) contains “The Secret
Integration.”
