Editing Thomas Pynchon (section)

===Early career===
====1950s====
{{Main|V.}}
[[File:V. (1963 1st ed cover).jpg|thumb|upright=0.7|alt=Book cover illustration of the letter "V." on an abstract horizon|''[[V.]]'' (1963)]]
After leaving Cornell, Pynchon began to work on his first novel, [[V.|''V''.]] From February 1960 to September 1962, he was employed as a technical writer at [[Boeing]] in [[Seattle]], where he compiled safety articles for the ''Bomarc Service News'', a support newsletter for the [[Bomarc Missile Program|BOMARC surface-to-air missile]] deployed by the [[U.S. Air Force]].<ref name=wisnicki2000>{{cite journal|last1=Wisnicki|first1=Adrian|title=A Trove of New Works by Thomas Pynchon? Bomarc Service News Rediscovered|journal=Pynchon Notes|date=2000|volume=46-49|issue=Spring 2000}}</ref> Pynchon's experiences at Boeing inspired his depictions of the "[[Yoyodyne]]" corporation in ''[[V.]]'' and ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]'', and both his background in physics and the technical journalism he undertook at Boeing provided much raw material for ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]''. ''V.'' won the [[William Faulkner Foundation Award|William Faulkner Foundation Award For Notable First Novel]] and was a finalist for the National Book Award.<ref name=nba1964>[https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-1964 "National Book Awards&nbsp;– 1964"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210415193400/https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-1964/ |date=April 15, 2021 }}. National Book Foundation. Retrieved March 29, 2012.</ref>

[[George Plimpton]] gave the book a positive review in ''[[The New York Times]]'', describing 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."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Plimpton |first=George |date=April 23, 1963 |title=The Whole Sick Crew |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-v.html |access-date=April 8, 2023 |archive-date=January 5, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230105195701/https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-v.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'''s review of ''V.'' concluded: ''"V.'' sails with majesty through caverns measureless to man. What does it mean? Who, finally, is V.? Few books haunt the waking or the sleeping mind, but this is one. Who, indeed?"<ref>{{Cite magazine |date=March 15, 1963 |title=Books: A Myth of Alligators |magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] |url=https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,870237-2,00.html |access-date=}}</ref>''.''

====1960s====
{{Main|The Crying of Lot 49}}
[[File:MutedPosthorn.png|thumb|upright=0.7|alt=Stylized line drawing of a post horn with a mute placed in the bell of the instrument|Pynchon created the "muted post horn" as a symbol for the secret "Trystero" society in ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]].'']]
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 a small downstairs apartment at 217 33rd St. in [[Manhattan Beach, California| Manhattan Beach]]<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-04-20-cb-56727-story.html |title=A Tour De Force: From LAX Tower to 'Pulp Fiction' Diner to Stars' Hangouts, Pop Culture Landmarks Dot Landscape Here&nbsp;– Page 2 |last=Johnson |first=Ted |newspaper=[[Los Angeles Times]] |date=April 20, 1995 |access-date=August 21, 2013 |archive-date=December 4, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131204030404/http://articles.latimes.com/1995-04-20/news/cb-56727_1_south-bay/2 |url-status=live }}</ref>
<ref name="frost">{{cite web|last1=Frost|first1=Garrison|title=Thomas Pynchon and the South Bay|url=http://www.theaesthetic.com/NewFiles/pynchon.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030306201820/http://www.theaesthetic.com/NewFiles/pynchon.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=March 6, 2003|website=The Aesthetic|access-date=September 26, 2014}}</ref> where he lived as he was composing what would become ''Gravity's Rainbow''.

In 1964 he applied to study mathematics as a graduate student at the [[University of California, Berkeley]], but was turned down.<ref name=royster2005>{{cite journal|last1=Royster|first1=Paul|title=Thomas Pynchon: A Brief Chronology|date=June 23, 2005}}</ref>

But in an April 1964 letter to his agent, Candida Donadio, Pynchon wrote that he had 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."<ref name=gussow1998 />

From the mid-1960s Pynchon also regularly provided [[blurbs]] and introductions for a wide range of novels and non-fiction works. He contributed an appreciation of [[Oakley Hall]]'s ''[[Warlock (Hall novel)|Warlock]]'' in a feature called "A Gift of Books" in the December 1965 issue of ''[[Holiday (magazine)|Holiday]]''. Pynchon wrote that Hall "has restored to the myth of [[Gunfight at the O.K. Corral|Tombstone]] its full, mortal, blooded humanity&nbsp;... It is this deep sensitivity to abysses that makes ''Warlock'', I think, one of our best American novels. For we are a nation that can, many of us, toss with all aplomb our candy wrapper into the Grand Canyon itself, snap a color shot and drive away; and we need voices like Oakley Hall’s to remind us how far that piece of paper, still fluttering brightly behind us, has to fall."<ref>{{Cite news |date=December 1965 |title="A Gift of Books" by Edward Albee, Joseph Heller, Alfred Kazin, Thomas Pynchon, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and others |work=[[Holiday (magazine)|Holiday]] |url=https://holidaymag.wordpress.com/2013/11/18/a-gift-of-books-by-edward-albee-joseph-heller-alfred-kazin-thomas-pynchon-isaac-bashevis-singer-and-others-december-1965/ |access-date=April 17, 2023 |archive-date=April 4, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230404010623/https://holidaymag.wordpress.com/2013/11/18/a-gift-of-books-by-edward-albee-joseph-heller-alfred-kazin-thomas-pynchon-isaac-bashevis-singer-and-others-december-1965/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

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."<ref name=mclemee2006>{{cite web|last1=McLemee|first1=Scott|title=You Hide, They Seek|url=https://www.insidehighered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee158|website=Inside Higher Ed|access-date=September 26, 2014|archive-date=April 3, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150403132203/https://www.insidehighered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee158|url-status=live}}</ref>

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."<ref name=gussow1998 />

''The Crying of Lot 49'' won the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award shortly after publication.<ref name=kihss1974>{{cite news|last1=Kihss|first1=Peter|title=Pulitzer Jurors Dismayed on Pynchon|newspaper=The New York Times|date=May 8, 1974|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1974/05/08/archives/pulitzer-jurors-his-third-novel.html|access-date=September 19, 2017|archive-date=July 31, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170731120909/http://www.nytimes.com/1974/05/08/archives/pulitzer-jurors-his-third-novel.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Awards: Literature |url=https://artsandletters.org/awards/?awdpage=literature |website=American Academy of Arts and Letters |access-date=January 14, 2022 |archive-date=January 14, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220114180031/https://artsandletters.org/awards/?awdpage=literature |url-status=live }}</ref> Although more concise and linear in its structure than Pynchon's other novels, its labyrinthine plot features an ancient, underground mail service known as "The Tristero" or "Trystero", a parody of a [[Revenge play|Jacobean revenge drama]] called ''The Courier's Tragedy'', and a corporate conspiracy involving the bones of [[World War II]] American [[GIs]] being used as charcoal [[cigarette filter]]s. It proposes a series of seemingly incredible connections between these events and other similarly bizarre revelations that confront the novel's protagonist, Oedipa Maas. Like ''V.'', the novel contains a wealth of references to science and technology and to obscure historical events. ''The Crying of Lot 49'' also continues Pynchon's habits of writing satiric song lyrics and referencing [[popular culture]]. An example of both can be seen in [[The Crying of Lot 49#Vladimir Nabokov|allusion]] to the narrator of Nabokov's ''[[Lolita]]'' in the lyric of a love lament sung by a member of "The Paranoids", an American teenage band who deliberately sing their songs with British accents (p.&nbsp;17). Despite Pynchon's alleged dislike, ''Lot 49'' received positive reviews; [[Harold Bloom]] named it one of Pynchon's "canonical works", along with ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'' and ''[[Mason & Dixon]]''. It was included on ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]''<nowiki/>'s list of the 100 best English-language novels published since the magazine's founding in 1923. Richard Lacayao wrote, "With its slapstick paranoia and heartbreaking metaphysical soliloquies, ''Lot 49'' takes place in the tragicomic universe that is instantly recognizable as Pynchon-land. Is it also a mystery novel? Absolutely, so long as you recognize the mystery here is the one at the heart of everything".<ref>{{Cite magazine |title=All-TIME 100 Novels |language=en-US |magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] |url=https://entertainment.time.com/2005/10/16/all-time-100-novels/slide/all/ |access-date=April 9, 2023 |issn=0040-781X}}</ref>

In June 1966, Pynchon wrote a first-hand report on the aftermath and legacy of the [[Watts Riots]] in Los Angeles, titled "A Journey Into the Mind of Watts", and published in ''[[The New York Times Magazine]]''.<ref name=pynchon1966>{{cite news|last1=Pynchon|first1=Thomas|title=A Journey into the Mind of Watts|url=http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_watts.html|work=The New York Times Magazine|date=June 12, 1966|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060219074830/http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_watts.html|archive-date=February 19, 2006}}</ref>

A negative aspect that Pynchon retrospectively found in the [[hippie movement]], both in the form of the Beats of the 1950s and the resurgence form of the 1960s, was that it "placed too much emphasis on youth, including the eternal variety."<ref name=pynchon1984 />

In 1968, Pynchon was one of 447 signatories to the "[[Writers and Editors War Tax Protest]]". Full-page advertisements in the ''[[New York Post]]'' and ''[[The New York Review of Books]]'' listed the names of those who had pledged not to pay "the proposed 10% income tax surcharge or any war-designated tax increase", and stated their belief "that American involvement in Vietnam is morally wrong".<ref name=wartax>{{cite web|title=Writers and Editors War Tax Protest Names|url=http://www.nwtrcc.org/history/writers-and-editors-names.php|website=National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee|access-date=September 26, 2014|archive-date=September 9, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140909194322/http://www.nwtrcc.org/history/writers-and-editors-names.php|url-status=live}}</ref>

====1970s====
{{Main|Gravity's Rainbow}}
[[File:Gravity's Rainbow (1973 1st ed cover).jpg|thumb|upright=0.7|alt=Book cover illustration of a London cityscape below a glowing yellow spiral in a red sky|''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'' (1973)]]
Pynchon's most famous novel is his third, ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'', published in 1973. An intricate and allusive fiction that combines and elaborates on many of the themes of his earlier work, including [[preterition]], [[paranoia]], [[racism]], [[colonialism]], [[conspiracy theory|conspiracy]], [[synchronicity]], and [[entropy]],<ref name="platerbook">{{cite book|last1=Plater|first1=William M.|title=Grim Phoenix: Reconstructing Thomas Pynchon|url=https://archive.org/details/grimphoenixrecon0000plat|url-access=registration|date=1978|publisher=Indiana University Press|isbn=978-0-253-32670-6}}</ref><ref name="chambersbook">{{cite book|last1=Chambers|first1=Judith|title=Thomas Pynchon|date=1992|publisher=Twayne Publishers|isbn=978-0-8057-3960-2}}</ref> there is a wealth of commentary and critical material, including reader's guides,<ref name="fowlerbook">{{cite book|last1=Fowler|first1=Douglas|title=A Reader's Guide to Gravity's Rainbow|date=1980|publisher=Ardis Press|isbn=978-0-88233-405-9}}</ref><ref name="weisenburgerbook">{{cite book|last1=Weisenburger|first1=Steven C.|title=A Gravity's Rainbow Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's Novel|url=https://archive.org/details/gravitysrainbowc0000weis|url-access=registration|date=1988|publisher=University of Georgia Press|isbn=978-0-8203-1026-8}}</ref> books and scholarly articles, online concordances and discussions, and art works. Its artistic value is often compared to that of [[James Joyce]]'s ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]''.<ref name=ruch2001>{{cite web|last1=Ruch |first1=Allen |title=Introduction to GR |url=http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_grintro.html |website=The Modern Word |access-date=September 26, 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100915171907/http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_grintro.html |archive-date=September 15, 2010 }}</ref> Some scholars have hailed it as the greatest American post-WW2 novel,<ref name=almansibook>{{cite book|last1=Almansi|first1=Guido|title=L'estetica dell'osceno|date=1994|publisher=Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi|page=226}}</ref> and it has similarly been described as "literally an anthology of postmodernist themes and devices".<ref name=mchalebook>{{cite book|last1=McHale|first1=Brian|title=Postmodernist Fiction|date=1987|publisher=Methuen|location=New York|isbn=978-0-415-04513-1|page=16}}</ref> [[Richard Locke (critic)|Richard Locke]], reviewing it in ''[[The New York Times]]'', wrote that ''"Gravity's Rainbow'' is longer, darker and more difficult than his first two books; in fact it is the longest, most difficult and most ambitious novel to appear in these pages since [[Nabokov]]'s ''[[Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle|Ada]]'' four years ago; its technical and verbal resources bring to mind [[Herman Melville|Melville]] and [[Faulkner]]."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Locke |first=Richard |date=March 11, 1973 |title=One of the Longest, Most Difficult, Most Ambitious Novels in Years |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-rainbow.html?module=inline |access-date=April 16, 2023 |archive-date=April 16, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230416234030/https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-rainbow.html?module=inline |url-status=live }}</ref>

The major portion of ''Gravity's Rainbow'' takes place in Europe in the final months of [[World War II]] and the weeks immediately following [[VE Day]], and is narrated for the most part from within the historical moment in which it is set. In this way, Pynchon's text enacts a type of [[irony|dramatic irony]] whereby neither the characters nor the various [[narrator|narrative voices]] are aware of specific historical circumstances, such as the [[Holocaust]] and, except as hints, premonitions and mythography, the complicity between Western corporate interests and the Nazi war machine, which figure prominently in readers' apprehensions of the novel's historical context. For example, at war's end the narrator observes: "There are rumors of a War Crimes Tribunal under way in Nürnberg. No one Slothrop has listened to is clear who's trying whom for what ..." (p.&nbsp;681). Such an approach generates dynamic tension and moments of acute self-consciousness, as both reader and author seem drawn ever deeper into the "[[Plot (narrative)|plot]]", in various senses of that term:

{{blockquote|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.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Pettman|first1=Dominic|editor1-last=Bertens|editor1-first=Hans|editor2-last=Natoli|editor2-first=Joseph|title=Postmodernism: The Key Figures|date=2002|publisher=Blackwell Publishers|location=Massachusetts|isbn=978-0-631-21796-1|pages=261–266|chapter=Thomas Pynchon}}</ref>}}
{{Quote box|align=left|width=200px|quote=If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.|source=–''Gravity's Rainbow''|salign=right}}

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 [[coppice]] within which he has momentarily taken refuge. In an overt incitement to [[Eco-anarchism|eco-activism]], Pynchon's narrative agency then has it that "a medium-sized pine nearby nods its top and suggests, 'Next time you come across a logging operation out here, find one of their tractors that isn't being guarded, and take its oil filter with you. That's what you can do.'" (p.&nbsp;553)

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 [[Graph paper#Formats|quadrille paper]]".<ref name=weisenburgerbook /> 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).<ref name=nba1974/> That same year, the [[Pulitzer Prize|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".<ref name=kihss1974/> (No Pulitzer Prize For Fiction was awarded that year and finalists were not recognized before 1980.)<ref name=pulitzer>[http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Fiction "Fiction"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160103055018/http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Fiction |date=January 3, 2016 }}. ''Past winners & finalists by category''. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved March 29, 2012.</ref> In 1975, Pynchon declined the [[William Dean Howells Medal]].<ref name=postindustrial>{{cite journal|last=Slade|first=Joseph W.|title=Thomas Pynchon, Postindustrial Humanist|journal=Technology and Culture|volume=23|issue=1|date=Jan 1982|pages=53–72|doi=10.2307/3104443|jstor=3104443|s2cid=146989742 }}</ref> Along with ''Lot 49'', ''Gravity's Rainbow'' was included on ''Time''<nowiki/>'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."<ref>{{Cite magazine |title=All-TIME 100 Best Novels |language= |magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] |url=https://entertainment.time.com/2005/10/16/all-time-100-novels/slide/all/ |access-date=April 9, 2023 |issn=0040-781X}}</ref>

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 "[[Slow Learner|The Secret Integration]]" (1964) and ''Gravity's Rainbow''.{{citation needed|date=March 2024}}