Editing Thomas Pynchon (section)

====''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>