Editing Thomas Pynchon (section)

====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}}