Editing Thomas Pynchon (section)

==Early life==
[[File:Thomas Pynchon, high school senior portrait, 1953.jpg|upright=0.7|alt=Black-and-white yearbook portrait|thumb|Pynchon, age 16, in his high school senior portrait]]
Thomas Pynchon was born on May 8, 1937, in [[Glen Cove, New York|Glen Cove]], [[Long Island]], New York,<ref>{{Cite book|last=Krafft|first=John M.|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1lshMpwOA4wC&pg=PA10|title=The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Pynchon|date=2012|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-76974-7|editor-last=Dalsgaard|editor-first=Inger H.|pages=10|language=en|chapter=Biographical note|editor-last2=Herman|editor-first2=Luc|editor-last3=McHale|editor-first3=Brian}}</ref> one of three children of engineer and politician Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Sr. (1907–1995) and Katherine Frances Bennett (1909–1996), a nurse. During his childhood, Pynchon alternately attended church at an [[Episcopal Church (United States)|Episcopal]] church with his father and a [[Roman Catholic|Catholic]] church with his mother.<ref name="vulture.com">{{Cite web|title=On the Thomas Pynchon Trail: From the Long Island of His Boyhood to the 'Yupper West Side' of His New Novel|url=https://www.vulture.com/2013/08/thomas-pynchon-bleeding-edge.html|last=Kachka|first=Boris|date=August 25, 2013|website=Vulture|access-date=February 12, 2020|archive-date=February 18, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200218170249/https://www.vulture.com/2013/08/thomas-pynchon-bleeding-edge.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

===Education and naval career===
A "voracious reader and precocious writer", Pynchon is believed to have [[Grade skipping|skipped]] two grades before high school.<ref name="vulture.com"/> Pynchon attended [[Oyster Bay High School]] in [[Oyster Bay (hamlet), New York|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.<ref>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).</ref><ref name=pynchonhamster>{{cite web|last1=Pynchon |first1=Thomas |title=Voice of the Hamster |url=http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_hamster.html |website=The Modern Word |access-date=September 26, 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130315194714/http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_hamster.html |archive-date=March 15, 2013 }}</ref><ref name=pynchonboys>{{cite web|last1=Pynchon |first1=Thomas |title=The Boys |url=http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_boys.html |website=The Modern Word |access-date=September 26, 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130315194955/http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_boys.html |archive-date=March 15, 2013 }}</ref><ref name=pynchonknight>{{cite web|last1=Pynchon |first1=Thomas |title=Ye Legend of Sir Stupid and the Purple Knight |url=http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_knight.html |website=The Modern Word |access-date=September 26, 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130119074615/http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_knight.html |archive-date=January 19, 2013 }}</ref>

{{Infobox military person
| image         = Thomas Pynchon, Navy Sailor.jpg
| width_style   = narrow
| image_upright = 0.7
| alt           = A black-and-white photo portrait of a man in a naval sailor's military uniform
| caption       = Pynchon {{circa}}{{nbsp}}1955
| allegiance    = {{flag|United States}}
| branch        = {{flag|United States Navy}}
| branch_label  = Branch
| serviceyears  = 1955–1957
| serviceyears_label = Service&nbsp;years
| servicenumber = 4881936<ref>{{cite web |title=National Archives National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) VIP list, 2009 |date=March 2008 |publisher=[[National Personnel Records Center]] |url=https://www.governmentattic.org/2docs/NPRC_VIP_List_2009.pdf |access-date=October 19, 2021 |via=GovernmentAttic.org |archive-date=November 27, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211127181249/https://www.governmentattic.org/2docs/NPRC_VIP_List_2009.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref>
}}

Pynchon graduated from high school in 1953 at the age of 16. That fall, he went to [[Cornell University]] to study [[engineering physics]]. At the end of his sophomore year, he enlisted to serve in the [[U.S. Navy]]. He attended [[Recruit training|boot camp]] at [[United States Naval Training Center Bainbridge]], Maryland, then received training to be an [[electrician]] at a base in [[Norfolk, Virginia]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Cowart |first=David |year=2011 |title=Thomas Pynchon and the Dark Passages of History |publisher=[[University of Georgia Press]] |location=[[Athens, Georgia]] |isbn=978-0-8203-3709-8 |page=3}}</ref> In 1956, he was aboard the [[destroyer]] [[USS Hank|USS ''Hank'']] in the Mediterranean during the [[Suez Crisis]].<ref>{{Cite book|last=Krafft|first=John M.|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1lshMpwOA4wC&pg=PR10|title=The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Pynchon|date=2012|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-76974-7|editor-last=Dalsgaard|editor-first=Inger H.|pages=x|language=en|chapter=Chronology of Pynchon's Life and Works|editor-last2=Herman|editor-first2=Luc|editor-last3=McHale|editor-first3=Brian}}</ref> According to recollections from his Navy friends, Pynchon said at the time that he did not intend to complete his college education.<ref name="vulture.com" />

[[File:USS Hank (DD-702) on 26 August 1944 (19-N-71818).jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.2|During his time as a US Navy sailor, Pynchon is believed to have served aboard the [[USS Hank|USS ''Hank'']] during the [[Suez Crisis]].]]

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 [[United States Army|Army]]; subsequently, however, episodes and characters throughout Pynchon's fiction draw freely upon his own experiences in the Navy.<ref name=pynchon1984>{{cite book|last1=Pynchon|first1=Thomas|title=Slow Learner|date=1984|publisher=Little, Brown and Company|isbn=978-0-316-72442-5|pages=[https://archive.org/details/slowlearnerearly00pync/page/8 8–32]|url=https://archive.org/details/slowlearnerearly00pync/page/8}}</ref> His short story, "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna", was published in the Spring 1959 issue of ''[[Epoch (American magazine)|Epoch]]''.<ref>[[McHale, Brian]] (1981), ''Thomas Pychon: A Portrait of the Artist as a Missing Person'', in ''[[Cencrastus]]'' No. 5, Summer 1981, pp. 2 - 7, {{issn|0264-0856}}</ref>

While at Cornell, Pynchon befriended [[Richard Fariña]], [[Kirkpatrick Sale]], and [[David Shetzline]].<ref>{{Cite book|last=Krafft|first=John M.|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1lshMpwOA4wC&pg=PA13|title=The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Pynchon|date=2012|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-76974-7|editor-last=Dalsgaard|editor-first=Inger H.|pages=13|language=en|chapter=Biographical note|editor-last2=Herman|editor-first2=Luc|editor-last3=McHale|editor-first3=Brian|access-date=February 7, 2023|archive-date=February 7, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230207200832/https://books.google.com/books?id=1lshMpwOA4wC&pg=PA13|url-status=live}}</ref> Pynchon would go on to dedicate ''Gravity's Rainbow'' to Fariña, and to serve as his best man and his pallbearer. In his introduction to Fariña's novel ''[[Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me]]'', Pynchon recalls that "we also succeeded in getting on the same literary wavelength. We showed up once at a party, not a masquerade party, in disguise—he as [[Hemingway]], I as [[Scott Fitzgerald]], each of us aware that the other had been through a phase of enthusiasm for his respective author&nbsp;... Also in '59 we simultaneously picked up on what I still think is among the finest American novels, [[Oakley Hall]]'s ''[[Warlock (1958 novel)|Warlock]]''. We set about getting others to read it too, and for a while we had a micro-cult going. Soon a number of us were talking in ''Warlock'' dialogue, a kind of thoughtful, stylized, Victorian-Wild West diction."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Pynchon |first=Thomas |title=[[Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me]] |year=1983 |pages=x-xi}}</ref> Pynchon reportedly attended lectures given by [[Vladimir Nabokov]], who then taught literature at Cornell. Although Nabokov later said that he had no memory of Pynchon, Nabokov's wife [[Véra Nabokov|Véra]], who graded her husband's class papers, commented that she remembered his distinctive handwriting as a mixture of printed and [[cursive]] letters, "half printing, half script."<ref name=sweeney2008>{{cite journal|last=Sweeney |first=Susan Elizabeth |title=The V-Shaped Paradigm: Nabokov and Pynchon |journal=Cycnos |date=June 25, 2008 |volume=12 |url=http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/document.html?id=1475 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090719002805/http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/document.html?id=1475 |archive-date=July 19, 2009 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/thomas-pynchon-on-911-american-literature-s-greatest-conspiracy-theorist-finally-addresses-his-8830225.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220507/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/thomas-pynchon-on-911-american-literature-s-greatest-conspiracy-theorist-finally-addresses-his-8830225.html |archive-date=May 7, 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|title=Thomas Pynchon on 9/11: American literature's greatest conspiracy|date=September 20, 2013|website=The Independent|access-date=February 12, 2020}}{{cbignore}}</ref> In 1958, Pynchon and Sale wrote part or all of a science-fiction musical, ''Minstrel Island'', which portrayed a dystopian future in which [[IBM]] rules the world.<ref name=gibbs2004>{{cite journal|last=Gibbs |first=Rodney |title=A Portrait of the Luddite as a Young Man |journal=Denver Quarterly |date=2004 |volume=39 |issue=1 |url=http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/paper_gibbs.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061112151827/http://themodernword.com/pynchon/paper_gibbs.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=November 12, 2006 }}</ref> Pynchon received his [[B.A.]] with distinction as a member of [[Phi Beta Kappa]] in June 1959.
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