Editing Thomas Pynchon (section)

===Later career===
[[File:Slow Learner (1984 1st ed cover).jpg|thumb|upright=0.7|alt=Book cover illustration of a massive white fountain pen seated on a bicycle|''[[Slow Learner]]'' (1984)]]
A collection of Pynchon's early short stories, ''[[Slow Learner]]'', was published in 1984, with a lengthy [[autobiographical]] introduction. In October of the same year, an article titled "Is It O.K. to Be a Luddite?" was published in ''[[The New York Times Book Review]]''.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-luddite.html |date=October 28, 1984 |title=Is It O.K. To Be A Luddite? |first=Thomas |last=Pynchon |work=The New York Times |access-date=October 24, 2016 |archive-date=December 6, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161206141725/http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-luddite.html |url-status=live }}</ref> In April 1988, Pynchon reviewed [[Gabriel García Márquez]]'s ''[[Love in the Time of Cholera]]'' in ''[[The New York Times]]'', calling it "a shining and heartbreaking book."<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/10/books/the-heart-s-eternal-vow.html?pagewanted=all |title=The Heart's Eternal Vow |first=Thomas |last=Pynchon |date=April 10, 1988 |work=The New York Times |access-date=February 13, 2017 |archive-date=April 24, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170424025629/http://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/10/books/the-heart-s-eternal-vow.html?pagewanted=all |url-status=live }}</ref> Another article, titled "Nearer, My Couch, to Thee", was published in June 1993 in ''The New York Times Book Review'', as one in a series of articles in which various writers reflected on each of the [[Seven Deadly Sins]]. Pynchon's subject was "[[Seven deadly sins|Sloth]]".<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-sloth.html |date=June 6, 1993 |title=The Deadly Sins/Sloth; Nearer, My Couch, to Thee |first=Thomas |last=Pynchon |work=The New York Times |access-date=October 24, 2016 |archive-date=February 1, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170201052724/http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-sloth.html |url-status=live }}</ref> In 1989, Pynchon was one of many authors who signed a letter of solidarity with [[Salman Rushdie]] after Rushdie was sentenced to death by the [[Ruhollah Khomeini|Ayatollah]] for his novel ''[[The Satanic Verses]]''. Pynchon wrote: "I pray that tolerance and respect for life prevail. I keep thinking of you."<ref>{{Cite news |date=March 12, 1989 |title=Words for Salman Rushdie |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/04/18/specials/rushdie-words.html?_r=1&oref=slogin |access-date=April 4, 2023 |archive-date=April 4, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230404010037/https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/04/18/specials/rushdie-words.html?_r=1&oref=slogin |url-status=live }}</ref>

====''Vineland''====
{{Main|Vineland}}
Pynchon's fourth novel, ''[[Vineland]]'', was published in 1990 and disappointed some fans and critics. It did, however, receive a positive review from Salman Rushdie, who called it "free-flowing and light and funny and maybe the most readily accessible piece of writing the old Invisible Man ever came up with&nbsp;... the entropy's still flowing, but there is something new to report, some faint possibility of redemption, some fleeting hints of happiness and grace. Thomas Pynchon, like [[Paul Simon]]'s girl in New York City, who calls herself the Human Trampoline, is bouncing into Graceland."<ref>{{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 }}</ref> The novel is set in California in the 1980s and 1960s and describes the relationship between an [[FBI]] [[COINTELPRO]] agent and a female radical filmmaker. Its strong socio-political undercurrents detail the constant battle between [[authoritarianism]] and [[Communalism (Bookchin)|communalism]], and the nexus between [[resistance movement|resistance]] and complicity, but with a typically Pynchonian sense of humor.<ref name=berressembook>{{cite book|last1=Berressem|first1=Hanjo|title=Pynchon's Poetics: Interfacing Theory and Text|date=1992|publisher=University of Illinois Press|location=Urbana and Chicago|isbn=978-0-252-01919-7|pages=236–7}}</ref>

In 1988, he received a [[MacArthur Fellowship]] and, since the early 1990s at least, he has been frequently cited as a contender for the [[Nobel Prize in Literature]].<ref name=gray1993>{{cite news|last1=Gray|first1=Paul|title=Rooms of Their Own|url=http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,979434,00.html|access-date=September 26, 2014|work=Time Magazine|date=October 18, 1993|archive-date=August 14, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140814012213/http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,979434,00.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name=duvallbook>{{cite book|editor1-last=Duvall|editor1-first=John N.|title=Productive Postmodernism: Consuming Histories and Cultural Studies|date=2002|publisher=State University of New York Press|location=Albany|isbn=978-0-7914-5193-9|page=76}}</ref><ref name=rising2008>{{cite news|last1=Rising|first1=Malin|title=Nobel literature: Will an American win after all?|url=http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/topstories/2008-10-09-83478680_x.htm|access-date=September 26, 2014|work=USA Today|date=October 9, 2008|archive-date=September 23, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150923180649/http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/topstories/2008-10-09-83478680_x.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> Pynchon provided a blurb for [[Don DeLillo]]'s novel ''[[Mao II]]'', about a reclusive novelist and partly inspired by the [[Satanic Verses controversy|fatwa]] on Salman Rushdie: "This novel's a beauty. DeLillo takes us on a breathtaking journey, beyond all the official versions of our daily history, behind all the easy assumptions about who we're supposed to be, with a vision as bold and a voice as eloquent and morally focused as any in American writing."<ref>{{Cite web |title=Blurbs From Thomas Pynchon |url=http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/uncollected/blurbs.html |access-date=April 19, 2023 |website=www.pynchon.pomona.edu |archive-date=April 19, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230419194218/http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/uncollected/blurbs.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

====''Mason & Dixon''====
{{Main|Mason & Dixon}}
{{multiple image
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 | image1 = Mason & Dixon (1997 1st ed jacket cover).jpg
 | alt1 = Book cover illustration zoomed in on the ampersand between the words "Mason & Dixon" written in ink on parchment

 | image2 = Mason and Dixon.png
 | alt2 = Stippled illustration of two men on a hill overseeing the American wilderness

 | footer = ''[[Mason & Dixon]]'' (1997) is a fictionalized account of the lives of [[Charles Mason]] and [[Jeremiah Dixon]], the historical surveyors of the [[Mason–Dixon line]].}}

The meticulously researched novel is a sprawling [[postmodern literature|postmodernist]] saga recounting the lives and careers of the English astronomer [[Charles Mason]] and his partner, the surveyor [[Jeremiah Dixon]], whose survey of the American West resulted in the [[Mason–Dixon line]], during the birth of the [[American Revolution|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."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Boyle |first=T. C. |date=May 18, 1997 |title=The Great Divide |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/970518.18boylet.html |access-date=January 5, 2023 |archive-date=January 5, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230105195700/https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/970518.18boylet.html |url-status=live }}</ref> [[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."<ref name="Kakutani">{{Cite news |last=Kakutani |first=Michiko |date=April 29, 1997 |title=Pynchon Hits the Road With Mason and Dixon |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/04/27/daily/pynchon-book-review.html?_r=1&oref=slogin |access-date=March 20, 2023 |archive-date=March 20, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230320231744/https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/04/27/daily/pynchon-book-review.html?_r=1&oref=slogin |url-status=live }}</ref> The American critic [[Harold Bloom]] hailed the novel as Pynchon's "masterpiece to date".<ref name=bloom2003>{{cite book|last1=Bloom|first1=Harold|title=Thomas Pynchon|date=2003|publisher=Chelsea House|isbn=978-0-7910-7030-7}}</ref> Bloom named Pynchon as one of the four major American novelists of his time, along with [[Cormac McCarthy]], [[Philip Roth]] and [[Don DeLillo]].<ref>{{cite news |last=Pierce |first=Leonard |date=June 15, 2009 |title=Harold Bloom on ''Blood Meridian'' |newspaper=[[The A.V. Club]] |url=http://www.avclub.com/articles/harold-bloom-on-blood-meridian,29214/ |access-date=August 27, 2013 |archive-date=November 5, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131105103802/http://www.avclub.com/articles/harold-bloom-on-blood-meridian,29214/ |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Bloom |first=Harold |date=September 24, 2003 |title=Dumbing down American readers |url=http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/09/24/dumbing_down_american_readers |work=The Boston Globe |access-date=September 23, 2015 |archive-date=March 20, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160320210202/http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/09/24/dumbing_down_american_readers/ |url-status=live }}</ref> 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."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Kohn |first=Marek |date=June 4, 2010 |title=Book Of A Lifetime: Mason & Dixon, By Thomas Pynchon |work=[[The Independent]] |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/book-of-a-lifetime-mason-dixon-by-thomas-pynchon-1990622.html |access-date=April 25, 2023 |archive-date=April 25, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230425221347/https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/book-of-a-lifetime-mason-dixon-by-thomas-pynchon-1990622.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

====''Against the Day''====
{{Main|Against the Day}}
A variety of rumors pertaining to the subject matter of ''[[Against the Day]]'' circulated for a number of years. Most specific of these were comments made by the former German minister of culture [[Michael Naumann]], who stated that he assisted Pynchon in his research about "a Russian mathematician [who] studied for [[David Hilbert]] in [[Göttingen]]", and that the new novel would trace the life and loves of [[Sofia Kovalevskaya]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Makowsky |first1=Johann A. |title=Modernism, Fiction and Mathematics |journal=Notices of the American Mathematical Society |date=2020 |volume=67 |issue=10 |page=1593 |doi=10.1090/noti2170 |s2cid=196470810 |quote=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,|doi-access=free }}</ref>

In July 2006, a new, untitled novel by Pynchon was announced along with a description written by Pynchon himself: "Spanning the period between the [[Chicago World's Fair of 1893]] and the years just after [[World War I]], this novel moves from the [[Colorado Labor Wars|labor troubles in Colorado]] to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the times of the mysterious [[Tunguska Event]], Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all. With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred." He promised cameos by [[Nikola Tesla]], [[Bela Lugosi]] and [[Groucho Marx]], as well as "stupid songs" and "strange sexual practices". Subsequently, the title of the new book was reported to be ''Against the Day'' and a Penguin spokesperson confirmed that the synopsis was Pynchon's.<ref name=patterson2006>{{cite web|last1=Patterson|first1=Troy|title=The Pynchon Post|url=http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2006/07/the_pynchon_post.html|website=Slate|date=July 19, 2006|access-date=September 26, 2014|archive-date=September 14, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140914192403/http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2006/07/the_pynchon_post.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name=italie2006>{{cite news|last1=Italie|first1=Hillel|title=New Thomas Pynchon Novel is on the way|agency=Associated Press|date=July 20, 2006}}</ref>

''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."<ref name=leith2006>{{cite news|last1=Leith|first1=Sam|title=Pinning down Pynchon|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/dec/02/thomaspynchon|access-date=September 26, 2014|work=The Guardian|date=December 1, 2006|archive-date=September 28, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140928203715/http://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/dec/02/thomaspynchon|url-status=live}}</ref> Other reviewers described ''Against the Day'' as "lengthy and rambling"<ref name=wood2007>{{cite news|last1=Wood|first1=Michael|title=Humming along|url=http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n01/michael-wood/humming-along|access-date=September 26, 2014|work=London Review of Books|issue=1|date=January 4, 2007|volume=29|archive-date=October 3, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141003235117/http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n01/michael-wood/humming-along|url-status=live}}</ref> and "a baggy monster of a book",<ref name=sante2007>{{cite news|last1=Sante|first1=Luc|title=Inside the Time Machine|url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2007/jan/11/inside-the-time-machine/?pagination=false|access-date=September 26, 2014|work=The New York Review of Books|date=January 11, 2007|archive-date=April 2, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402231931/http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2007/jan/11/inside-the-time-machine/?pagination=false|url-status=live}}</ref> while negative appraisals condemned the novel for its "silliness"<ref name=kirsch2006>{{cite news|last1=Kirsch|first1=Adam|title=Pynchon: He Who Lives By the List, Dies by It|url=http://www.nysun.com/arts/pynchon-he-who-lives-by-the-list-dies-by-it/43545/|access-date=September 26, 2014|work=The New York Sun|date=November 15, 2006|archive-date=October 18, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141018064146/http://www.nysun.com/arts/pynchon-he-who-lives-by-the-list-dies-by-it/43545/|url-status=live}}</ref> or characterized its action as "fairly pointless" and remained unimpressed by its "grab bag of themes".<ref name=miller2006>{{cite web|last1=Miller|first1=Laura|title=The fall of the house of Pynchon|url=http://www.salon.com/2006/11/21/pynchon_3/|website=Salon.com|date=November 21, 2006|access-date=September 26, 2014|archive-date=October 17, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141017052501/http://www.salon.com/2006/11/21/pynchon_3/|url-status=live}}</ref>

In 2006, Pynchon wrote a letter defending [[Ian McEwan]] against charges of plagiarism in his novel ''[[Atonement (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."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Reynolds |first=Nigel |date=December 6, 2006 |title=Recluse speaks out to defend McEwan |work=[[The Daily Telegraph|The Telegraph]] |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1536152/Recluse-speaks-out-to-defend-McEwan.html |access-date=April 4, 2018 |archive-date=February 27, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180227054840/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1536152/Recluse-speaks-out-to-defend-McEwan.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

====''Inherent Vice''====
{{Main|Inherent Vice|Inherent Vice (film)}}
''[[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-[[hardboiled|noir]], part-[[psychedelia|psychedelic]] romp, all Thomas Pynchon—[[private investigator|private eye]] Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a [[cannabis (drug)|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.<ref name="kurutz2009">{{cite news |last1=Kurutz |first1=Steven |date=August 11, 2009 |title=Yup, It's Him: A Pynchon Mystery Solved |work=[[The Wall Street Journal]] |url=https://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2009/08/11/pynchon-revealed/ |access-date=September 26, 2014 |archive-date=February 2, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150202012856/http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2009/08/11/pynchon-revealed/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

A 2014 film adaptation of the [[Inherent Vice (film)|same name]] was directed by [[Paul Thomas Anderson]].

====''Bleeding Edge''====
{{main|Bleeding Edge (novel)}}
''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 attacks|September 11]]." The novel was published on September 17, 2013,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/02/25/pynchon-takes-on-silicon-alley/|title=Pynchon Takes On Silicon Alley|last=Alden|first=William|date=February 25, 2013|website=DealBook|publisher=[[The New York Times]]|access-date=August 21, 2013|archive-date=July 7, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130707173507/http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/02/25/pynchon-takes-on-silicon-alley/|url-status=live}}</ref> to positive reviews.

====''Shadow Ticket''====
In April 2025, [[Penguin Press]] announced a new novel from Pynchon, titled ''Shadow Ticket'', with a synopsis, due for publication in October 2025.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Alter |first1=Alexandra |title=Thomas Pynchon to Publish a New Novel This Fall |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/09/books/thomas-pynchon-new-novel-shadow-ticket.html |access-date=10 April 2025 |date=9 April 2025 |language=en}}</ref> The novel, which is set in 1932, centers on a Milwaukee [[private investigator]] who is set adrift in Hungary while he is tracking the heiress to a [[Wisconsin cheese]] fortune.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Temple |first1=Emily |title=Thomas Pynchon is publishing a new novel this fall. |url=https://lithub.com/thomas-pynchon-is-publishing-a-new-novel-this-fall/ |access-date=9 April 2025 |work=Literary Hub |date=9 April 2025}}</ref>