View source for Thomas Pynchon

{{Short description|American novelist (born 1937)}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=November 2023}}
{{Redirect|Pynchon}}
{{Infobox writer
|name             = Thomas Pynchon
|image            = Thomas Pynchon, high school yearbook editor, 1953.jpg
|alt              = Black-and-white photograph of a kneeling youth with short hair
|caption          = Pynchon in his 1953 yearbook image
|birth_name       = Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr.
|birth_date       = {{birth date and age|1937|5|8}}
|birth_place      = [[Glen Cove, New York]], U.S.
|death_date       = 
|death_place      = 
|movement         = [[Postmodern literature]]
|education        = [[Cornell University]] ([[Bachelor of Arts|BA]])
|period           = {{circa|1959}}–present
|notableworks     = {{ubl|''[[V.]]'' (1963)|''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]'' (1966)|''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'' (1973)|''[[Mason & Dixon]]'' (1997)|''[[Inherent Vice]]'' (2009)|See [[Thomas Pynchon bibliography|bibliography]]}}
|spouse           = {{marriage|Melanie Jackson|1990}}
|children         = 1
|signature        = Thomas Pynchon signature.svg
}}

'''Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr.''' ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|p|ɪ|n|tʃ|ɒ|n}} {{respell|PIN|chon}},<ref>As pronounced by Pynchon himself: {{Cite episode |title=Diatribe of a Mad Housewife |episode-link= |url= |access-date= |series=The Simpsons |series-link=The Simpsons |first= |last= |network=[[Fox Broadcasting Company|Fox]] |station= |date= |season=15 |number=10 |minutes= |time= |transcript='''Thomas Pynchon''' (voiced by the real Thomas Pynchon): Here's your quote: 'Thomas Pynchon loved this book almost as much as he loves cameras.' |transcript-url= |quote=}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |author=Kachka |first=Boris |date=August 25, 2013 |title=On the Thomas Pynchon Trail: From the Long Island of His Boyhood to the 'Yupper West Side' of His New Novel |url=http://www.vulture.com/2013/08/thomas-pynchon-bleeding-edge.html |magazine=New York Magazine |access-date=December 14, 2022}}</ref> {{small|commonly}} {{IPAc-en|'|p|ɪ|n|tʃ|ən}} {{respell|PIN|chən}};<ref>{{Cite web |title=Pynchon |url=https://www.dictionary.com/browse/pynchon |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150120192705/http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pynchon |archive-date=January 20, 2015 |website=[[Dictionary.com]]}}</ref> born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist. He is noted for his complex works of [[postmodern fiction]], characterized by dense references to [[popular culture]], history, literature, music, science, and mathematics, as well as by humor and explorations of [[paranoia]]. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest [[American literature|American novelists]]. Pynchon is notoriously reclusive. Few photographs of him have been published, and rumors about his location and identity have circulated since the 1960s.

Born on [[Long Island]], Pynchon served two years in the [[United States Navy]] and earned an English degree from [[Cornell University]]. After publishing several short stories in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he began composing the novels for which he is best known: ''[[V.]]'' (1963), ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]'' (1966), and ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'' (1973). For the latter, Pynchon won the 1974 U.S. [[National Book Award for Fiction]].<ref name="nba1974">{{Cite web |date=March 29, 2012 |title=1974 National Book Award winners |url=https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-1974/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190324043852/https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-1974/ |archive-date=March 24, 2019 |website=[[National Book Foundation]]}} (With essays by Casey Hicks and Chad Post from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog. The mock acceptance speech by Irwin Corey is not reprinted by NBF.)</ref> Pynchon followed with the novels ''[[Vineland]]'' (1990), which was [[One Battle After Another|loosely adapted for film in 2025]], ''[[Mason & Dixon]]'' (1997), ''[[Against the Day]]'' (2006), ''[[Inherent Vice]]'' (2009), which was [[Inherent Vice (film)|adapted for film]] in 2014, and ''[[Bleeding Edge (novel)|Bleeding Edge]]'' (2013). Pynchon's latest novel, ''[[Shadow Ticket]]'', was published in 2025.

==Early life==
[[File:Thomas Pynchon, high school senior portrait, 1953.jpg|upright=0.7|alt=Black-and-white yearbook portrait|thumb|Pynchon, aged 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. As a child, Pynchon alternately attended 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"/> He attended [[Oyster Bay High School]] in [[Oyster Bay (hamlet), New York|Oyster Bay]], where he was named "student of the year" and contributed short fictional pieces to his school newspaper. These [[Juvenilia|juvenilia]] incorporated some of the literary motifs and subject matter he has used throughout his career: oddball names, sophomoric humor, illicit drug use, and paranoia.<ref>Pynchon's 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
| 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 age 16. That fall, he went to [[Cornell University]] to study [[engineering physics]]. At the end of his sophomore year, he enlisted 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]]. Pynchon's later fiction draws freely upon his 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]]'' magazine.<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 dedicated ''Gravity's Rainbow'' to Fariña, and served as his best man and his pallbearer. In Pynchon's introduction to Fariña's novel ''[[Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me]]'', he writes, "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 by [[Vladimir Nabokov]], who at the time taught literature at Cornell. Nabokov later said that he had no memory of Pynchon, but Nabokov's wife [[Véra Nabokov|Véra]], who graded her husband's class papers, said 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 theorist finally addresses his country's greatest trauma|first=John|last=Walsh|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 portrays 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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==Career==
===Early career===
====1950s====
{{Main|V.|l1=''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 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]]'', calling it 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|l1=''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 became ''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 | last=Royster | first=Paul | title=Thomas Pynchon: A Brief Chronology | journal=SSRN Electronic Journal | date=2008 | issn=1556-5068 | doi=10.2139/ssrn.1299687 | doi-access=free | url=https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=libraryscience | access-date=2025-10-18 }}</ref>

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 regularly provided [[blurbs]] and introductions for a wide range of novels and nonfiction 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 said 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, technology, and 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 Journey Into the Mind of Watts", a firsthand report on the aftermath and legacy of the [[Watts Riots]] in Los Angeles 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>

Pynchon retrospectively found that the [[hippie movement]], both in the form of the Beats of the 1950s and the resurgence form of the 1960s, "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|l1=''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> it has generated 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 called it the greatest American post-World War II 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, ''"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 [[Victory in Europe Day|V-E 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". 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 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.'"

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 in "neat, tiny script on engineer's [[Graph paper#Formats|quadrille paper]]".<ref name=weisenburgerbook /> He worked on the novel throughout the 1960s and early 1970s while 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 for Fiction]] panel unanimously recommended ''Gravity's Rainbow'' for the award, but the Pulitzer board vetoed the recommendation, calling the novel "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. Thereafter a long line of Pynchon descendants found wealth and repute on American soil. Deborah Madsen argues that Pynchon's ancestry and family background have partially inspired his fiction, particularly in the Slothrop family histories related in the short story "[[Slow Learner|The Secret Integration]]" (1964) and ''Gravity's Rainbow''.<ref>L. Madsen, D., (1998) “Family Legacies: Identifying the Traces of William Pynchon in Gravity's Rainbow”, Pynchon Notes , 29-48. doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/pn.138</ref>

===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 that 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, "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|l1=''Vineland''}}
Pynchon's fourth novel, ''[[Vineland]]'', was published in 1990 and disappointed some fans and critics. But it received a favorable review from 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=[[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 radical filmmaker. Its strong sociopolitical undercurrents detail the 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 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>

In 2025, [[Paul Thomas Anderson]] released the film ''[[One Battle After Another]]'', inspired by plot points from ''Vineland''.

====''Mason & Dixon''====
{{Main|Mason & Dixon|l1=''Mason & Dixon''}}
{{multiple image
 | total_width = 320
 | 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 by [[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=https://archive.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|l1=''Against the Day''}}
Various rumors about the subject matter of ''[[Against the Day]]'' circulated for years. Most specific of these were comments made by the former German minister of culture [[Michael Naumann]], who said 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 |arxiv=1907.05787 }}</ref>

In July 2006, a new, untitled novel by Pynchon was announced along with a description by Pynchon: "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 to review it. 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 called ''Against the Day'' "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{{mdash}}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|l1=''Inherent Vice''|Inherent Vice (film)|l2=''Inherent Vice'' (film)}}
''[[Inherent Vice]]'' was published in August 2009.

A synopsis and brief extract from the novel, along with its title and dust jacket image, were printed in Penguin Press's 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.<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)|l1=''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''====
{{main|Shadow Ticket|l1=''Shadow Ticket''}}
In April 2025, [[Penguin Press]] announced a new novel by Pynchon, ''Shadow Ticket'', with a synopsis, which was published on October 7, 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><ref>[[Kathryn Schulz|Schulz, Kathryn]]. [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/09/29/shadow-ticket-thomas-pynchon-book-review "No Way Out: In Thomas Pynchon's 'Shadow Ticket,' all the ends are loose"]. ''The New Yorker'', September 29, 2025, pp. 60–63.</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon |url=https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/316427/shadow-ticket-by-thomas-pynchon/ |website=PenguinRandomhouse.com |access-date=27 October 2025}}</ref> The novel, which is set in 1932, centers on a Milwaukee [[private investigator]] who is set adrift in Hungary while 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>

==Artistry==

===Themes and motifs===
Critic [[Michiko Kakutani]] identified a central theme connecting all of Pynchon's novels: "Is the world dominated by conspiracy or chaos? Are there patterns, secret codes, hidden agendas{{mdash}}in short, a hidden design{{mdash}}to the bubble and turmoil of human existence, or is it all a product of chance?"<ref name="Kakutani"/> Pynchon's work explores philosophical, theological, and sociological ideas exhaustively, though in quirky and approachable ways. His writings demonstrate a strong affinity with the practitioners and artifacts of [[low culture]], including [[comic book]]s and [[animated cartoon|cartoons]], [[pulp magazine|pulp fiction]], popular films, [[television|television programs]], [[cookery]], [[urban myth]]s, [[conspiracy theories]], and [[folk art]]. This blurring of the conventional boundary between "high" and "low" culture has been seen as one of the defining characteristics of his writing.<ref name="Moore 1987">{{cite book|last=Moore|first=Thomas|title=The Style of Connectedness: Gravity's Rainbow and Thomas Pynchon|date=1987|publisher=University of Missouri Press|isbn=978-0826206251}}</ref><ref name="Cowart 1990">{{cite journal|last=Cowart|first=David|title=Attenuated Postmodernism: Pynchon's Vineland|journal=Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction|date=1990|volume=32|number=2|pages=67–76|doi=10.1080/00111619.1990.9933800|url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00111619.1990.9933800|access-date=June 13, 2021|archive-date=June 13, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210613021855/https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00111619.1990.9933800|url-status=live|url-access=subscription}}</ref>

Pynchon makes frequent musical allusions. McClintic Sphere in ''[[V.]]'' is a composite of jazz musicians such as [[Ornette Coleman]], [[Charlie Parker]] and [[Thelonious Monk]]. In ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]'', the lead singer of the Paranoids sports "a [[Beatle]] haircut" and sings with an English accent. In the closing pages of ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'', there is an apocryphal report that Tyrone Slothrop, the novel's protagonist, played [[kazoo]] and [[harmonica]] as a guest musician on a record released by [[The Fool (design collective)|the Fool]] in the 1960s (having [[Magic realism|magically]] recovered the latter instrument, his "[[Blues harp|harp]]", in a German stream in 1945, after losing it down the toilet in 1939 at the Roseland Ballroom in [[Roxbury, Massachusetts|Roxbury]], [[Boston]], to the strains of the jazz standard "[[Cherokee (Ray Noble song)|Cherokee]]", upon which tune Charlie Parker was simultaneously inventing [[bebop]] in New York, as Pynchon describes). In ''Vineland'', both Zoyd Wheeler and Isaiah Two Four are also musicians: Zoyd played keyboards in a '60s [[surf music|surf]] band called the Corvairs, while Isaiah played in a [[punk rock|punk]] band called Billy Barf and the Vomitones. In ''[[Mason & Dixon]]'', one of the characters plays on the Clavier the varsity drinking song that will later become "[[The Star-Spangled Banner]]"; while in another episode a character remarks tangentially [[Stand by your man|"Sometimes, it's hard to be a woman."]] He also alludes to classical music; in ''V''., a character sings an aria from [[Mozart]]'s ''[[Don Giovanni]]''. In ''Lot 49'' Oedipa listens to "the Fort Wayne Settecento Ensemble's variorum recording of the [[Antonio Vivaldi|Vivaldi]] Kazoo Concerto, Boyd Beaver, soloist." In his introduction to ''[[Slow Learner]]'', Pynchon acknowledges a debt to the anarchic bandleader [[Spike Jones]], and in 1994, he penned a 3,000-word set of [[liner notes]] for the album ''Spiked!'', a collection of Jones's recordings released on the short-lived BMG Catalyst label.<ref>[http://www.45worlds.com/cdalbum/cd/09026619822 ''CD Album – Spike Jones – Spiked!''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220420012645/http://www.45worlds.com/cdalbum/cd/09026619822|date=April 20, 2022}} at [[45Worlds]]</ref> Pynchon also wrote the liner notes for ''[[Nobody's Cool]]'', the second album of [[indie rock]] band [[Lotion (band)|Lotion]], in which he states that "rock and roll remains one of the last honorable callings, and a working band is a miracle of everyday life. Which is basically what these guys do." He is known to be a fan of [[Roky Erickson]].<ref name="Meet Your Neighbor, Thomas Pynchon">{{Cite magazine |last=Sales |first=Nancy |date=November 11, 1996 |title=Meet Your Neighbor, Thomas Pynchon |url=http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/48268/index3.html |magazine=New York |access-date=May 31, 2017}}</ref>

Investigations and digressions into [[human sexuality]], [[psychology]], [[sociology]], [[mathematics]], [[science]], and [[technology]] recur throughout Pynchon's works. One of his earliest short stories, "Low-lands" (1960), features a meditation on [[Werner Heisenberg|Heisenberg's]] [[uncertainty principle]] as a metaphor for telling stories about one's own experiences. His next published work, "Entropy" (1960), introduced [[entropy|the concept]] which was to become synonymous with Pynchon's name (though Pynchon later admitted the "shallowness of [his] understanding" of the subject, and noted that choosing an abstract concept first and trying to construct a narrative based on it was "a lousy way to go about writing a story"). Another early story, "Under the Rose" (1961), includes among its cast of characters a [[cyborg]] set anachronistically in [[Victorian-era]] [[Egypt]] (a precursor of what is now called [[steampunk]]). This story, significantly reworked by Pynchon, appears as Chapter 3 of ''V.'' "The Secret Integration" (1964), Pynchon's last published short story, is a sensitively handled [[coming-of-age]] tale in which a group of young boys face the consequences of the American policy of [[racial integration]]. At one point in the story, the boys attempt to understand the new policy by way of the [[antiderivative|mathematical operation]], the only sense of the word with which they are familiar.

''The Crying of Lot 49'' also alludes to entropy and [[communication theory]], and contains scenes and descriptions which parody or appropriate [[calculus]], [[Zeno's paradoxes]], and the [[thought experiment]] known as [[Maxwell's demon]]. At the same time, the novel also investigates [[homosexuality]], [[celibacy]] and both medically sanctioned and illicit [[psychedelic drug]] use. ''Gravity's Rainbow'' describes many varieties of [[sexual fetishism]] (including [[sado-masochism]], [[coprophilia]] and a borderline case of [[tentacle erotica]]), and features numerous episodes of drug use, most notably [[cannabis (drug)|cannabis]] but also [[cocaine]], naturally occurring [[hallucinogen]]s, and the mushroom ''[[Amanita muscaria]].'' ''Gravity's Rainbow'' also derives much from Pynchon's background in mathematics: at one point, the geometry of garter belts is compared with that of [[cathedral]] spires, both described as [[mathematical singularities]]. ''Mason & Dixon'' explores the scientific, theological, and socio-cultural foundations of the [[Age of Reason]] while also depicting the relationships between actual historical figures and fictional characters in intricate detail and, like ''Gravity's Rainbow'', is an archetypal example of the genre of [[historiographic metafiction]].

===Style===
Pynchon's prose, with its wide range of styles and subjects, is commonly classified as [[postmodern]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://postmodernblog.tumblr.com/ |title=Postmodernism |publisher=postmodernblog.tumblr.com |access-date=August 21, 2013 |archive-date=December 20, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131220103428/http://postmodernblog.tumblr.com/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=http://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/companions/chapter.jsf?bid=CBO9781139019866&cid=CBO9781139019866A016 |title=Pynchon's postmodernism |year=2011 |publisher=University Publishing Online |doi=10.1017/CCOL9780521769747 |isbn=9780521769747 |access-date=August 21, 2013 |editor1-last=Dalsgaard |editor1-first=Inger H |editor2-first=Luc |editor2-last=Herman |editor3-first=Brian |editor3-last=McHale |archive-date=December 19, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131219161423/http://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/companions/chapter.jsf?bid=CBO9781139019866&cid=CBO9781139019866A016 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|jstor=20872015|title='Gravity's Rainbow' and the postmodern picaro|last=Rosenthal|first=Regine|journal=Revue française d'études américaines|issue=42|date=November 1989|volume=42|pages=407–426|doi=10.3406/rfea.1989.1376}}</ref> Poet [[L. E. Sissman]] wrote in ''[[The New Yorker]]'': "He is almost a mathematician of prose, who calculates the least and the greatest stress each word and line, each pun and ambiguity, can bear, and applies his knowledge accordingly and virtually without lapses, though he takes many scary, bracing linguistic risks. Thus his remarkably supple diction can first treat of a painful and delicate love scene and then roar, without pause, into the sounds and echoes of a drugged and drunken orgy."<ref name=sissman1973>{{cite magazine|last1=Sissman|first1=L.E.|title=Hieronymus and Robert Bosch: The Art of Thomas Pynchon|magazine=The New Yorker|date=May 19, 1973}}</ref> Pynchon often engages in [[parodies]] or [[pastiche]]s of other styles; ''[[Mason & Dixon]]'' is written in the style of the eighteenth-century, when it takes place. [[Anthony Lane]], reviewing the novel in ''The New Yorker'', writes that "It sounds and, more important, looks like a period novel; it comes bedecked with archaic spellings, complex punctuation, words like 'Nebulosity,' 'Fescue,' 'pinguid,' and 'G-d.'&nbsp;... This is hard to fault as pastiche, and yet it moves beyond pastiche, with none of the cramped self-amusement that usually attends the genre."<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Lane |first=Anthony |date=May 12, 1997 |title=Then, Voyager |magazine=[[The New Yorker]] |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1997/05/12/then-voyager}}</ref> 

Pynchon makes frequent [[allusion]]s to other authors; in the introduction to ''[[Slow Learner]]'', a collection of his early short stories, he acknowledges his debts to the [[modernists]], especially [[T. S. Eliot]]'s ''[[The Waste Land]]'', and to the [[Beat Generation|Beats]], particularly [[Jack Kerouac]]'s ''[[On the Road]]''. He also writes of the influence of [[jazz]] and [[rock and roll]], and satiric song lyrics and mock [[Musical theatre|musical numbers]] are a trademark of his fiction. In his essay "Smoking Dope With Thomas Pynchon: A Sixties Memoir", Andrew Gordon writes: "Kerouac's heroes were filled with romantic angst and an unfulfilled yearning to burn like roman candles, whereas Pynchon's were clowns, schlemiels and human yo-yos, bouncing between farce and paranoia. Kerouac was of the cool fifties; he wrote jazz fiction. But Pynchon was of the apocalyptic sixties; he wrote rock and roll."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Gordon |first=Andrew |title=The Vineland Papers |year=1994}}</ref>

===Precursors and influences===
Pynchon's novels refer overtly to writers as disparate as [[Henry Adams]] (in ''V.'', p.&nbsp;62), [[Jorge Luis Borges]] (in ''Gravity’s Rainbow'', p.&nbsp;264), [[Deleuze and Guattari]] (in ''Vineland'', p.&nbsp;97),<ref name="Gazi 2016">{{cite journal|last=Gazi|first=Jordan|title=On Deleuze and Guattari's ''Italian Wedding Fake Book'': Pynchon, Improvisation, Social Organisation, and Assemblage|journal=Orbit: A Journal of American Literature|date=2014|volume=4|number=2|url=https://orbit.openlibhums.org/article/id/442/|access-date=June 14, 2021|archive-date=June 14, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210614012043/https://orbit.openlibhums.org/article/id/442/|url-status=live}}</ref> [[Emily Dickinson]] (in ''Gravity’s Rainbow'', pp.&nbsp;27–8), [[Umberto Eco]] (in ''Mason & Dixon'', p.&nbsp;559),<ref name="Logan 1998">{{cite journal|last=Logan|first=William|title=Pynchon in the Poetic|journal=Southwest Review|date=1998|volume=83|number=4|pages=424–37|jstor=43471943|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/43471943|access-date=June 13, 2021|archive-date=June 13, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210613000632/https://www.jstor.org/stable/43471943|url-status=live}}</ref> [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]] (in ''Vineland'', p.&nbsp;369), "[[Gerard Manley Hopkins|Hopkins]], [[T. S. Eliot]], [[Giorgio de Chirico|di Chirico’s]] novel ''[[Hebdomeros]]''" (in ''V.'', p.&nbsp;307), [[William March]],{{citation needed|date=June 2021}} [[Vladimir Nabokov]] (in ''The Crying of Lot 49'', p.&nbsp;120), [[Patrick O'Brian]] (in ''Mason & Dixon'', p.&nbsp;54), [[Ishmael Reed]] (in ''Gravity’s Rainbow'', p.&nbsp;558), [[Rainer Maria Rilke]] (in ''Gravity’s Rainbow'', p.&nbsp;97 f) and [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]] (in ''V.'', p.&nbsp;278 f), and to a heady mixture of iconic religious and philosophical sources.<ref name="Fahey 1977">{{cite journal|last=Fahey|first=Joseph|title=Thomas Pynchon's ''V.'' and Mythology|journal=Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction|date=1977|volume=18|number=3|pages=5–18|doi=10.1080/00111619.1977.10690141|url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00111619.1977.10690141?journalCode=vcrt20|access-date=June 14, 2021|archive-date=April 4, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230404015236/https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00111619.1977.10690141?journalCode=vcrt20|url-status=live|url-access=subscription}}</ref><ref name="Safer 1983">{{cite journal|last=Safer|first=Elaine M.|title=John O. Stark, ''Pynchon's Fictions: Thomas Pynchon and the Literature of Information'' (Book Review)|journal=The Yearbook of English Studies|date=1983|volume=13|page=356|doi=10.2307/3508174|jstor=3508174|url=https://www.proquest.com/openview/e1a35856c5b90af26dec7108f9f1bec0/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1817743|access-date=June 14, 2021|archive-date=June 14, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210614012044/https://www.proquest.com/openview/e1a35856c5b90af26dec7108f9f1bec0/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1817743|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="McClure 2007">{{cite book|last=McClure|first=John A.|title=Partial Faiths: Postsecular Fiction in the Age of Pynchon and Morrison|date=2007|publisher=University of Georgia Press|page=38|jstor=j.ctt46n5bh|isbn=978-0-8203-3660-2|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n5bh|access-date=June 14, 2021|archive-date=June 14, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210614012040/https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n5bh|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Smith 2014">{{cite journal|last=Smith|first=Jared|title=All Maps Were Useless – Resisting Genre and Recovering Spirituality in Pynchon's ''Against the Day''|journal=Orbit: A Journal of American Literature|date=2014|volume=2|number=2|url=https://orbit.openlibhums.org/article/id/471/|access-date=June 14, 2021|archive-date=June 14, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210614012043/https://orbit.openlibhums.org/article/id/471/|url-status=live}}</ref>

Critics have made comparisons of Pynchon's writing with works by [[Rabelais]],<ref name="Mendelson 1976">{{cite journal|last=Mendelson|first=Edward|title=Encyclopedic Narrative: From Dante to Pynchon|journal=MLN Comparative Literature|date=1976|volume=91|number=6|pages=1267–75|doi=10.2307/2907136|jstor=2907136|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2907136|access-date=June 20, 2021|archive-date=June 24, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210624222425/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2907136|url-status=live|url-access=subscription}}</ref><ref name="Donoghue 2014">{{cite book|last=Donoghue|first=William|title=Mannerist Fiction: Pathologies of Space from Rabelais to Pynchon|date=2014|publisher=University of Toronto Press|isbn=978-1-4426-4801-2|url=https://utorontopress.com/us/mannerist-fiction-3|access-date=June 20, 2021|archive-date=December 4, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201204050659/https://utorontopress.com/us/mannerist-fiction-3|url-status=dead}}</ref> [[Cervantes]],<ref name="Mendelson 1976" /><ref name="Holdsworth 1988">{{cite journal|last=Holdsworth|first=Carole|title=Cervantine Echoes in Early Pynchon|journal=Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America|date=1988|volume=8|number=1|pages=47–53|doi=10.3138/cervantes.8.1.047|s2cid=190326661 |url=https://www.h-net.org/~cervantes/csa/artics88/holdswor.htm|access-date=June 20, 2021|archive-date=June 21, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210621045154/https://www.h-net.org/~cervantes/csa/artics88/holdswor.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> [[Laurence Sterne]],<ref name="Battestin 1997">{{cite journal|last=Battestin|first=M.C.|title=Review: Pynchon, North and South|journal=Sewanee Review|date=1997|volume=105|number=3|pages=lxxvi–lxxviii|jstor=27548359|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/27548359|access-date=June 20, 2021|archive-date=June 25, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210625051415/https://www.jstor.org/stable/27548359|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Stonehill 1988">{{cite book|last=Stonehill|first=Brian|author-link=Brian Stonehill|title=The Self-Conscious Novel: Artifice in Fiction from Joyce to Pynchon|date=1988|publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press|jstor=j.ctv4rfsgd|isbn=978-1-5128-0732-5|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv4rfsgd|access-date=June 20, 2021|archive-date=June 25, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210625031921/https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv4rfsgd|url-status=live}}</ref> [[Edgar Allan Poe]],<ref name="Lenz 1991">{{cite journal|last=Lenz|first=William E.|title=Poe's ''Arthur Gordon Pym'' and the Narrative Techniques of Antarctic Gothic|journal=CEA Critic|date=1991|volume=53|number=3|pages=30–8|jstor=44377065|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/44377065|access-date=June 20, 2021|archive-date=June 25, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210625000427/https://www.jstor.org/stable/44377065|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Hashhozheva 2008">{{cite journal|last=Hashhozheva|first=Galena|title=The Mittelwerke: Site–Para-site–Non-site|journal=Pynchon Notes|date=2008|issue=54–5|pages=137–53|url=https://pynchonnotes.openlibhums.org/issue/259/info/|access-date=June 20, 2021|archive-date=June 24, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210624201311/https://pynchonnotes.openlibhums.org/issue/259/info/|url-status=live}}</ref> [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]],<ref name="Min 2003">{{cite journal|last=Min|first=Hye Sook|title=The Pyncheons of ''The House of the Seven Gables'': Questing after Thomas Pynchon|journal=Journal of English and American Studies|date=2003|volume=2|pages=121–33}}</ref><ref name="Madsen 2008">{{cite book|last=Madsen|first=Deborah Lea|chapter=Pynchon and the Tradition of American Romance|chapter-url=https://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:92020|editor-last=Schaub|editor-first=T.H.|title=Approaches to Teaching Thomas Pynchon's ''The Crying of Lot 49'' and Other Works|url=https://www.mla.org/Publications/Bookstore/Approaches-to-Teaching-World-Literature/Approaches-to-Teaching-Pynchon-s-The-Crying-of-Lot-49-and-Other-Works|date=2008|publisher=Modern Language Association, New York|pages=25–30|access-date=June 20, 2021|archive-date=June 24, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210624201743/https://www.mla.org/Publications/Bookstore/Approaches-to-Teaching-World-Literature/Approaches-to-Teaching-Pynchon-s-The-Crying-of-Lot-49-and-Other-Works|url-status=live}}</ref> [[Herman Melville]],<ref name="Mendelson 1976" /><ref name="Palmeri 2012">{{cite book|last=Palmeri|first=Frank|title=Satire in Narrative: Petronius, Swift, Gibbon, Melville, & Pynchon| date=2012|publisher=University of Texas Press|isbn=978-0292741508}}</ref> [[Charles Dickens]],<ref name="Poirier 1975">{{cite journal|last=Poirier|first=Richard|title=The Importance of Thomas Pynchon|journal=Twentieth Century Literature|date=1975|volume=21|number=2|pages=151–62|doi=10.2307/440705|jstor=440705|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/440705|access-date=June 20, 2021|archive-date=June 25, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210625025301/https://www.jstor.org/stable/440705|url-status=live|url-access=subscription}}</ref><ref name="Logan 2009">{{cite book|last=Logan|first=William|chapter=Pynchon in the Poetic|chapter-url=https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.7312/loga14732-022/html|title=Our Savage Art: Poetry and the Civil Tongue|date=2009|publisher=Columbia University Press|pages=221–33|doi=10.7312/loga14732-022|isbn=9780231147323|url=http://cup.columbia.edu/book/our-savage-art/9780231147323|access-date=June 20, 2021|archive-date=June 24, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210624202152/http://cup.columbia.edu/book/our-savage-art/9780231147323|url-status=live}}</ref> [[Joseph Conrad]],<ref name="Green 1982">{{cite journal|last=Green|first=Martin|title=''The Crying of Lot 49'': Pynchon's Heart of Darkness|journal=Pynchon Notes|date=1982|issue=8|pages=30–8|doi=10.16995/pn.458|url=https://pynchonnotes.openlibhums.org/article/id/2504/|access-date=June 20, 2021|archive-date=June 24, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210624202101/https://pynchonnotes.openlibhums.org/article/id/2504/|url-status=live|doi-access=free}}</ref><ref name="Cooley 1993">{{cite journal|last=Cooley|first=Ronald W.|title=The Hothouse or the Street: Imperialism and Narrative in Pynchon's ''V.''|journal=Modern Fiction Studies|date=1993|volume=39|number=2|pages=307–25|doi=10.1353/mfs.0.0354|jstor=26284217|s2cid=162401378|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26284217|access-date=June 20, 2021|archive-date=June 25, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210625030317/https://www.jstor.org/stable/26284217|url-status=live}}</ref> [[Thomas Mann]],<ref name="Smith 1990">{{cite journal|last=Smith|first=Evans Lansing|title=The Arthurian Underworld of Modernism: Thomas Mann, Thomas Pynchon, Robertson Davies|journal=Arthurian Interpretations|date=1990|volume=4|number=2|pages=50–64|jstor=27868683|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/27868683|access-date=June 20, 2021|archive-date=June 25, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210625030233/https://www.jstor.org/stable/27868683|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Spiridon 2013">{{cite journal|last=Spiridon|first=Monica|title=Holy Sinners: Narrative Betrayal and Thematic Machination in Thomas Mann's and Thomas Pynchon's novels|journal=Neohelicon|date=2013|volume=40|pages=199–208|doi=10.1007/s11059-013-0174-0|s2cid=161974352|url=https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11059-013-0174-0|access-date=June 20, 2021|archive-date=June 30, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210630040941/https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11059-013-0174-0|url-status=live|url-access=subscription}}</ref> [[William S. Burroughs]],<ref name="Hume 2000">{{cite journal|last=Hume|first=Kathryn|title=Books of the Dead: Postmortem Politics in Novels by Mailer, Burroughs, Acker, and Pynchon|journal=Modern Philology|date=2000|volume=97|number=3|pages=417–44|doi=10.1086/492868|s2cid=153989943|url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/492868|access-date=June 20, 2021|archive-date=June 24, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210624202900/https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/492868|url-status=live|url-access=subscription}}</ref><ref name="Cooper 1983">{{cite book|last=Cooper|first=Peter L.|title=Signs and Symptoms: Thomas Pynchon and the Contemporary World|date=1983|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0520045378}}</ref> [[Ralph Ellison]],<ref name="Cooper 1983" /><ref name="Witzling 2008">{{cite book|last=Witzling|first=David|title=Everybody's America: Thomas Pynchon, Race, and the Cultures of Postmodernism|date=2008|publisher=Routledge|doi=10.4324/9780203479681|isbn=9780203479681|url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203479681/everybody-america-david-witzling|access-date=June 20, 2021|archive-date=June 24, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210624200619/https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203479681/everybody-america-david-witzling|url-status=live}}</ref> [[Patrick White]],<ref name=hospitalbook>{{cite book|last1=Hospital|first1=Janette Turner|title=Collected Stories: 1970 To 1995|date=1995|pages=361–2}}</ref><ref name="Burdett 2001">{{cite journal|last=Burdett|first=Lorraine|title=Synthetics Surveillance and Sarsaparilla: Patrick White and the New Gossip Economy|journal=Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature|date=2001|volume=Special conference issue: Australian Literature in a Global World edited by Wenche Ommundsen and Tony Simoes da Silva|url=https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/index.php/JASAL/article/view/10153|access-date=June 20, 2021|archive-date=June 24, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210624200717/https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/index.php/JASAL/article/view/10153|url-status=live}}</ref> and [[Toni Morrison]].<ref name="McClure 2007" /><ref name="Schell 2014">{{cite journal|last=Schell|first=Robert|title=Engaging Foundational Narratives in Morrison's ''Paradise'' and Pynchon's ''Mason & Dixon''|journal=College Literature|date=2014|volume=41|number=3|pages=69–94|doi=10.1353/lit.2014.0029|jstor=24544601|s2cid=143028097|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24544601|access-date=June 20, 2021|archive-date=June 24, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210624214842/https://www.jstor.org/stable/24544601|url-status=live}}</ref>

Pynchon's work also has similarities with [[literary modernism|modernist]] writers who wrote long novels dealing with large [[metaphysical]] or [[political]] issues, such as [[James Joyce]]'s ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]'', [[E. M. Forster]]'s ''[[A Passage to India]]'', [[Wyndham Lewis]]'s ''[[The Apes of God]]'', [[Robert Musil]]'s ''[[The Man Without Qualities]]'' and [[John Dos Passos]]'s [[U.S.A. (trilogy)|''U.S.A.'' trilogy]].<ref name="chambersbook" /><ref name="peirce1982">{{cite journal|last1=Peirce|first1=Carol Marshall|title=Pynchon's ''V.'' and Durrell's ''Alexandria Quartet'': A Seminar in the Modern Tradition|journal=Pynchon Notes|date=1982|volume=8|pages=23–29}}</ref><ref name="porush1994">{{cite journal|last1=Porush|first1=David|title="The Hacker We Call God": Transcendent Writing Machines in Kafka and Pynchon|journal=Pynchon Notes|date=1994|volume=34–35|pages=129–47}}</ref><ref name="tannerbook" /><ref name="brook1983">{{cite journal|last1=Brook|first1=Thomas|title=What's the Point? On Comparing Joyce and Pynchon|journal=Pynchon Notes|date=1983|volume=11|pages=44–48}}</ref> A strong influence can be discerned of [[Vladimir Nabokov]]'s ''[[The Real Life of Sebastian Knight]]'' on Pynchon's first novel ''[[V.]]'', which resembles Nabokov's novel in plot, character, narration and style, and whose title alludes directly to Nabokov's narrator "V."<ref name="sweeney2008" /> Pynchon also outlines the influence on his own early fiction of literary works by [[Ernest Hemingway]], [[Henry Miller]], [[Saul Bellow]], [[Herbert Gold]], [[Philip Roth]], [[Norman Mailer]], [[John Buchan]] and [[Graham Greene]], and non-fiction works by [[Helen Waddell]], [[Norbert Wiener]] and [[Isaac Asimov]].<ref name=pynchon1984 />

==Legacy and influence==
Pynchon's work has been cited as an influence and inspiration by many writers, among them [[Elfriede Jelinek]] (who translated ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'' into German), [[David Foster Wallace]], [[William T. Vollmann]], [[Richard Powers]], [[Steve Erickson]], [[David Mitchell (author)|David Mitchell]], [[Neal Stephenson]], [[Dave Eggers]], [[William Gibson]], [[T. C. Boyle]], [[Salman Rushdie]], [[Alan Moore]], and [[Tommaso Pincio]] (whose pseudonym is an Italian rendering of Pynchon's name).<ref>{{multiref2
|1={{Cite news|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/a-literary-recluse-the-mystery-of-pynchon-412214.html|archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220507/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/a-literary-recluse-the-mystery-of-pynchon-412214.html|archive-date=May 7, 2022|url-access=subscription|url-status=live|title=A literary recluse: The mystery of Pynchon|date=August 17, 2006|work=The Independent|access-date=January 24, 2018|language=en-GB}}
|2={{Cite news|url=http://www.newsweek.com/2013/11/08/lush-life-william-t-vollmann-243896.html|title=The Lush Life of William T. Vollmann|date=November 6, 2013|work=Newsweek|access-date=January 24, 2018|language=en|archive-date=January 24, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180124072229/http://www.newsweek.com/2013/11/08/lush-life-william-t-vollmann-243896.html|url-status=live}}
|3={{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/books/review/thomas-pynchons-mason-dixon-essay-alexander-nazaryan.html|title=A Personal Foray Into the Long-Lost Pynchon Tapes|last=Nazaryan|first=Alexander|date=May 19, 2017|work=The New York Times|access-date=January 24, 2018|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331|archive-date=January 24, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180124072707/https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/books/review/thomas-pynchons-mason-dixon-essay-alexander-nazaryan.html|url-status=live}}
|4={{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/11/william-gibson-i-was-losing-a-sense-of-how-weird-the-real-world|title=William Gibson: 'I Was Losing A Sense of How weird the real world was'|last=Guardian|date=October 7, 2015|work=The Guardian}}
|5={{Cite web|url=http://moussemagazine.it/alan-moore-hans-ulrich-obrist-2013/|title=A for Alan Moore — Mousse Magazine and Publishing|date=December 2013|access-date=March 20, 2020|archive-date=March 20, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200320133153/http://moussemagazine.it/alan-moore-hans-ulrich-obrist-2013/|url-status=live}}
|6={{Cite news|url=https://tommasopincio.net/2013/02/24/toilet-bowls-in-gravitys-rainbow/|title=TOILET BOWLS IN GRAVITY'S RAINBOW|date=February 24, 2013|work=Tommaso Pincio Post|access-date=January 24, 2018|language=it-IT|archive-date=January 25, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180125015230/https://tommasopincio.net/2013/02/24/toilet-bowls-in-gravitys-rainbow/|url-status=live}}
|7={{Cite news|url=https://io9.gizmodo.com/dave-eggers-thomas-pynchon-and-isabel-allende-expose-o-1351440125|title=A new crop of literary novels explores our internet dystopia|last=Anders|first=Charlie Jane|work=io9|access-date=January 24, 2018|language=en-US|archive-date=January 24, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180124071220/https://io9.gizmodo.com/dave-eggers-thomas-pynchon-and-isabel-allende-expose-o-1351440125|url-status=live}}
|8={{Cite news|url=https://www.believermag.com/issues/200306/?read=article_evenson|title=The Believer – The Romantic Fabulist Predicts a Dreamy Apocalypse|date=June 1, 2003|work=The Believer|access-date=January 24, 2018|language=en|archive-date=January 24, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180124071030/https://www.believermag.com/issues/200306/?read=article_evenson|url-status=live}}
}}</ref>

Thanks to his influence on Gibson and Stephenson in particular, Pynchon became one of the progenitors of [[cyberpunk]] fiction; a 1987 essay in ''[[Spin magazine|Spin]]'' magazine by [[Timothy Leary]] explicitly named ''Gravity's Rainbow'' as the "Old Testament" of cyberpunk, with Gibson's ''[[Neuromancer]]'' and its sequels as the "New Testament". Though the term "cyberpunk" did not become prevalent until the early 1980s, since Leary's article many readers have retroactively included ''Gravity's Rainbow'' in the genre, along with other works—[[Samuel R. Delany]]'s ''[[Dhalgren]]'' and many works of [[Philip K. Dick]]—which seem, in hindsight, to anticipate cyberpunk styles and themes. The [[encyclopedic]] nature of Pynchon's novels also led to some attempts to link his work with the [[hypertext fiction]] movement of the 1990s.<ref name=page2002>{{cite book|last1=Page|first1=Adrian|editor1-last=Bissell|editor1-first=Elizabeth B|title=The Question of Literature: The Place on the Literary in Contemporary Theory'|date=2002|publisher=Manchester University Press|isbn=978-0-7190-5744-1|chapter=Towards a poetics of hypertext fiction}}</ref> 

[[Ian Rankin]], author of the [[Inspector Rebus]] mystery novels, called encountering Pynchon in college "a revelation": "Pynchon seemed to fit the model I was learning of literature as an extended code or grail quest. Moreover, he was like a drug: as you worked out one layer of meaning, you quickly wanted to move to the next. He wrote action novels about spies and soldiers which also happened to be detective stories and bawdy romps. … His books were picaresquely post-modern and his humour was Marxian (tendance: Groucho). On page six of ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]'', the name Quackenbush appears, and you know you are in safely comedic hands."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Rankin |first=Ian |date=November 26, 2006 |title=Reader Beware... |work=[[The Guardian]] |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/nov/18/fiction.ianrankin |access-date=April 4, 2023 |archive-date=April 4, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230404025531/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/nov/18/fiction.ianrankin |url-status=live }}</ref> 

The main-belt asteroid 152319 is named after Pynchon.<ref name="Guido 2013">{{cite news|last=Guido|first=Ernesto|title=Asteroids named after Thomas Pynchon & Stabia|url=http://remanzacco.blogspot.it/2013/11/asteroids-named-after-thomas-pynchon.html|access-date=June 11, 2014|archive-date=July 14, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714201801/http://remanzacco.blogspot.it/2013/11/asteroids-named-after-thomas-pynchon.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

In 2025, after the publication of ''[[Shadow Ticket]]'' and the release of ''[[One Battle After Another]]'' (a film adaptation of ''[[Vineland]])'', [[Parul Sehgal]] wrote, "beginning with his novels ''[[V.]]'' (1963) and ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]'' (1966) and ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'' (1973), Pynchon unleashed a vision of America that now feels all too familiar—a world swathed in conspiracy and trawled by self-appointed sleuths parsing every passing signal and sign, their paths lit by the bright beam of their own righteousness."<ref>{{Cite news |date=2025-10-09 |title=Thomas Pynchon Saw Where America Was Headed. What Does He See Now? |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/magazine/thomas-pynchon-shadow-ticket.html |access-date=2025-10-13 |language=en}}</ref>

==Media scrutiny of private life==
Relatively little is known about Pynchon's private life; he has carefully avoided contact with reporters for more than fifty years. Only a few photos of him are known to exist, nearly all from his high school and college days, and his whereabouts have often remained undisclosed.

A 1963 review of ''V.'' in ''[[The New York Times Book Review]]'' described Pynchon as "a recluse" living in Mexico, thereby introducing the [[mass media|media]] label with which journalists have characterized him throughout his career.<ref name=plimpton1963>{{cite news|last1=Plimpton|first1=George|title=Mata Hari with a Clockwork Eye, Alligators in the Sewer|url=http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/books/Pynchon_V.pdf|access-date=September 26, 2014|work=The New York Times|date=April 21, 1963|archive-date=October 14, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141014162704/http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/books/Pynchon_V.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref> Nonetheless, Pynchon's personal absence from [[mass media]] is one of the notable features of his life, and it has generated many rumors and apocryphal anecdotes.

Around 1984, Pynchon wrote an introduction for his short story collection ''[[Slow Learner]]''. His comments on the stories after reading them again for the first time in many years, and his recollection of the events surrounding their creation, amount to some of the author's only autobiographical comments to his readers.

===1970s and 1980s===
After the publication and success of ''Gravity's Rainbow'', interest mounted in finding out more about the identity of the author. At the 1974 National Book Awards ceremony, the president of [[Viking Press]], [[Thomas Guinzburg|Tom Guinzberg]], arranged for double-talking comedian [[Irwin Corey|"Professor" Irwin Corey]] to accept the prize on Pynchon's behalf.<ref name=royster2005 /> Many of the assembled guests had no idea who Corey was and had never seen the author, so they assumed it was Pynchon himself on the stage delivering Corey's trademark torrent of rambling, pseudo-scholarly verbiage.<ref name=corey1974>{{cite web|last1=Corey|first1=Irwin|title=Transcript of Remarks Given at the National Book Awards, Thursday, April 18, 1974|url=http://www.irwincorey.org/routines.html|access-date=October 17, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131224035906/http://irwincorey.org/routines.html|archive-date=December 24, 2013|url-status=dead}}</ref> Toward the end of Corey's address a [[Streaking|streaker]] ran through the hall, adding further to the confusion.

An article by [[John Batchelor]] published in the ''[[SoHo Weekly News]]'' in 1977 claimed that Pynchon was in fact [[J. D. Salinger]].<ref name=batchelor1976>{{cite news|last1=Batchelor|first1=J. C.|title=Thomas Pynchon is not Thomas Pynchon, or, This is End of the Plot Which Has No Name|work=[[SoHo Weekly News]]|date=April 22, 1976}}</ref> Pynchon's written response to this theory said that "some of it was true, but none of the interesting parts. Not bad. Keep trying."<ref name=tannerbook>{{cite book|last1=Tanner|first1=Tony|title=Thomas Pynchon|date=1982|isbn=978-0-416-31670-4|page=[https://archive.org/details/thomaspynchon00tann/page/18 18]|publisher=Methuen |url=https://archive.org/details/thomaspynchon00tann/page/18}}</ref><ref>"A SoHo Weekly News Who's Who," by Allan Wolper. https://sohomemory.org/a-soho-weekly-news-whos-who {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230322213652/https://sohomemory.org/a-soho-weekly-news-whos-who |date=March 22, 2023 }}</ref>

Thereafter, the first piece to provide substantial information about Pynchon's personal life was a biographical account written by a former Cornell University friend, [[Jules Siegel]], and published in ''[[Playboy]]'' magazine. In his article, Siegel reveals that Pynchon had a [[complex (psychology)|complex]] about his teeth and underwent extensive and painful reconstructive surgery, was nicknamed "Tom" at Cornell and attended [[mass (liturgy)|Mass]] diligently, acted as [[best man]] at Siegel's wedding, and that he later also had an affair with Siegel's wife. Siegel recalls Pynchon saying he did attend some of [[Vladimir Nabokov]]'s lectures at Cornell but that he could hardly make out what Nabokov was saying because of his thick Russian accent. Siegel also records Pynchon's commenting: "Every weirdo in the world is on my wavelength", an observation borne out by the [[crank (person)|crankiness]] and [[zealot]]ry that have attached themselves to his name and work in subsequent years.<ref name="siegel1977">{{cite news|last1=Siegel|first1=Jules|title=Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?|work=Playboy|date=Mar 1977}}</ref>

===1990s===
Pynchon does not like to talk to reporters, and refuses the spectacle of [[celebrity]] and public appearances. Some readers and critics have suggested that there were and are perhaps aesthetic (and ideological) motivations behind his choice to remain aloof from public life. For example, the protagonist in [[Janette Turner Hospital]]'s short story "For Mr. Voss or Occupant" (published in 1991), explains to her daughter that she is writing

{{blockquote|a study of authors who become reclusive. [[Patrick White]], [[Emily Dickinson]], [[J. D. Salinger]], Thomas Pynchon. The way they create solitary characters and [[persona]]e and then disappear into their fictions.<ref name=hospitalbook/>|}}

More recently, book critic Arthur Salm has written:

{{blockquote|the man simply chooses not to be a public figure, an attitude that resonates on a frequency so out of phase with that of the prevailing culture that if Pynchon and [[Paris Hilton]] were ever to meet—the circumstances, I admit, are beyond imagining—the resulting matter/[[antimatter]] explosion would vaporize everything from here to [[Tau Ceti]] IV.<ref name=salm2004>{{cite news|last1=Salm|first1=Arthur|title=A Screaming Comes Across the Sky (but Not a Photo)|work=San Diego Union-Tribune|date=8 Feb 2004}}</ref>|}}

Pynchon has published a number of articles and reviews in the mainstream American media, including words of support for Salman Rushdie and his then-wife, [[Marianne Wiggins]], after the [[fatwa]] was pronounced [[The Satanic Verses controversy|against Rushdie]] by the Iranian leader [[Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini]].<ref name=pynchon1989>{{cite news|last1=Pynchon|first1=Thomas|title=Words for Salman Rushdie|work=The New York Times Book Review|date=March 12, 1989}}</ref> The next year, Rushdie's enthusiastic review of Pynchon's ''Vineland'' prompted Pynchon to send him another message hinting that if Rushdie were ever in New York, the two should arrange a meeting. Eventually, the two did have dinner together. Rushdie later commented: "He was extremely Pynchon-esque. He was the Pynchon I wanted him to be".<ref>{{cite web |last=Boog |first=Jason |url=http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/salman-rushdies-dinner-with-thomas-pynchon_b9651 |title=Salman Rushdie's Dinner with Thomas Pynchon&nbsp;– GalleyCat |publisher=Mediabistro.com |date=July 17, 2009 |access-date=August 13, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120715115240/http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/salman-rushdies-dinner-with-thomas-pynchon_b9651 |archive-date=July 15, 2012 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

In 1990, Pynchon married his literary agent, Melanie Jackson—a great-granddaughter of [[Theodore Roosevelt]] and a granddaughter of [[Robert H. Jackson]], U.S. Supreme Court Justice and Nuremberg trials prosecutor—and fathered a son, Jackson, in 1991.<ref>{{Cite magazine|date=October 1, 2013|title=[Review] {{!}} First Family, Second Life, by Joshua Cohen|url=https://harpers.org/archive/2013/10/first-family-second-life/|access-date=August 13, 2020|magazine=Harper's Magazine|volume=October 2013|language=en|last1=Cohen|first1=Joshua|archive-date=September 27, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200927173921/https://harpers.org/archive/2013/10/first-family-second-life/|url-status=live}}</ref> The disclosure of Pynchon's 1990s location in New York City, after many years in which he was believed to be dividing his time between Mexico and northern California, led some journalists and photographers to try to track him down. Shortly before the publication of ''Mason & Dixon'' in 1997, a [[CNN]] camera crew filmed him in [[Manhattan]]. Angered by this invasion of his privacy, he called CNN asking that he not be identified in the footage of the street scenes near his home. When asked by CNN, Pynchon rejected their characterization of him as a recluse, saying, "My belief is that 'recluse' is a code word generated by journalists&nbsp;... meaning, 'doesn't like to talk to reporters'." CNN also quoted him as saying, "Let me be unambiguous. I prefer not to be photographed."<ref name=cnn1997>{{cite web|title=Where's Thomas Pynchon?|url=http://cgi.cnn.com/US/9706/05/pynchon/|website=CNN|access-date=September 26, 2014|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141203113826/http://cgi.cnn.com/US/9706/05/pynchon/|archive-date=December 3, 2014}}</ref> The next year, a reporter for the ''[[Sunday Times (South Africa)|Sunday Times]]'' managed to snap a photo of him as he was walking with his son.<ref name=bone1998>{{cite news|last1=Bone|first1=James|title=Who the hell is he?|work=Sunday Times (South Africa)|date=June 7, 1998}}</ref>

After several references to Pynchon's work and reputation were made on [[NBC]]'s ''[[The John Larroquette Show]]'', Pynchon (through his agent) reportedly contacted the series' producers to offer suggestions and corrections. When a local Pynchon sighting became a major plot point in a 1994 episode of the series, Pynchon was sent the script for his approval; as well as providing the title of a fictitious work to be used in one episode ("Pandemonium of the Sun"), Pynchon apparently vetoed a final scene that called for an extra playing him to be filmed from behind, walking away from the shot.<ref name=cnn1997/><ref name=glenn2003>{{cite news|last1=Glenn|first1=Joshua|title=Pynchon and Homer|url=https://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2003/10/19/pynchon_and_homer/|access-date=September 26, 2014|work=The Boston Globe|date=October 19, 2003|archive-date=March 4, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304072734/http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2003/10/19/pynchon_and_homer/|url-status=live}}</ref> Pynchon also insisted that it should be specifically mentioned in the episode that he was seen wearing a [[Roky Erickson]] T-shirt.<ref name="Grantland2013">{{cite web |url=https://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/purple-drank-britney-and-the-rachel-the-weird-but-logical-pop-culture-obsessions-of-thomas-pynchons-bleeding-edge/ |title=Purple Drank, Britney, and The Rachel: The Weird But Logical Pop Culture Obsessions of Thomas Pynchon's Bleeding Edge |last=Pappademas |first=Alex |date=September 25, 2013 |website=[[Grantland]] |access-date=September 9, 2020 |archive-date=October 28, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201028233348/https://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/purple-drank-britney-and-the-rachel-the-weird-but-logical-pop-culture-obsessions-of-thomas-pynchons-bleeding-edge/ |url-status=live }}</ref> According to the ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'', this spurred an increase in sales of Erickson's albums.<ref name="LATimes1994">{{cite news |last=Kipen |first=David |date=May 8, 1994 |title=Brevity's Raincheck |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-05-08-bk-55045-story.html |work=[[Los Angeles Times]] |access-date=September 9, 2020 |archive-date=October 28, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201028161739/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-05-08-bk-55045-story.html |url-status=live }}</ref> Also during the 1990s, Pynchon befriended members of the band [[Lotion (band)|Lotion]] and wrote liner notes for the band's 1995 album ''Nobody's Cool''. Although the band initially claimed that he had seen them in concert and become a groupie, in 2009 they told ''[[The New Yorker]]'' that they met him through his accountant, who was drummer Rob Youngberg's mother; she gave him an advance copy of the album and he agreed to write the liner notes, only later seeing them in concert.<ref name="newyorker2009">{{cite magazine|last1=Glazek|first1=Christopher|title=The Pynchon Hoax|url=http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-pynchon-hoax|magazine=The New Yorker|date=August 10, 2009}}</ref> Pynchon then conducted an interview with the band ("Lunch with Lotion") for ''Esquire'' in June 1996 in the lead-up to the publication of ''Mason & Dixon''. More recently, Pynchon provided [[fax]]ed answers to questions submitted by author [[David Hajdu]] and permitted excerpts from his personal correspondence to be quoted in Hajdu's 2001 book ''Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of [[Joan Baez]], [[Bob Dylan]], [[Mimi Baez Fariña]] and [[Richard Fariña]]''.<ref name=warner2001>{{cite news|last1=Warner|first1=Simon|title=A king, a queen and two knaves?: An Interview with David Hadju (sic)|url=http://www.popmatters.com/feature/010802-hadju/|access-date=September 26, 2014|work=PopMatters|date=August 2, 2001|archive-date=March 4, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304215305/http://www.popmatters.com/feature/010802-hadju/|url-status=live}}</ref>

Pynchon's insistence on maintaining his personal [[privacy]] and on having his work speak for itself has resulted in a number of outlandish rumors and hoaxes over the years. Indeed, claims that Pynchon was the [[Unabomber]] or a sympathizer with the Waco [[Branch Davidians]] after the 1993 siege were upstaged in the mid-1990s by the invention of an elaborate rumor that Pynchon and one "[[Wanda Tinasky]]" were the same person.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://thinkinthemorning.com/the-wanda-tinasky-affair/|title=The Wanda Tinasky Affair|publisher=thinkinthemorning.com|date=October 8, 2016|access-date=December 28, 2022|archive-date=December 27, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221227234959/https://thinkinthemorning.com/the-wanda-tinasky-affair/|url-status=live}}</ref> A collection of the Tinasky letters was eventually published as a paperback book in 1996; Pynchon denied having written the letters, and no direct attribution of the letters to him was ever made. "Literary detective" [[Donald Foster (professor)|Donald Foster]] subsequently showed that the ''Letters'' were in fact written by an obscure [[Beat generation|Beat]] writer, [[Tom Hawkins (writer)|Tom Hawkins]], who had murdered his wife and then committed suicide in 1988. Foster's evidence was conclusive, including finding the typewriter on which the "Tinasky" letters had been written.<ref name=fosterbook>{{cite book|last1=Foster|first1=Don|title=Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous|url=https://archive.org/details/authorunknown00donf|url-access=registration|date=2000}}</ref>

In 1998, over 120 letters that Pynchon had written to his longtime agent, Candida Donadio, were donated by the family of a private collector, Carter Burden, to the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City. The letters ranged from 1963 to 1982. The Morgan Library originally intended to allow scholars to view the letters, but at Pynchon's request the Burden family and Morgan Library agreed to seal them until after Pynchon's death.<ref name=gussow1998>{{cite news|last1=Gussow|first1=Mel|title=Pynchon's Letters Nudge His Mask|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/04/books/pynchon-s-letters-nudge-his-mask.html|access-date=September 26, 2014|work=The New York Times|date=March 4, 1998|archive-date=August 19, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140819044624/http://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/04/books/pynchon-s-letters-nudge-his-mask.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

===2000s===
[[File:Thomas Pynchon Simpsons.png|thumb|right|alt=Cartoon frame showing a man with a paper bag over his head talking into a mobile phone. The bag has a large question mark printed on it and the man stands in front of a large illuminated sign in block letters which says 'THOMAS PYNCHON'S HOUSE – COME ON IN'|Pynchon depicted in ''[[The Simpsons]]'' episode "[[Diatribe of a Mad Housewife]]". His ''Simpsons'' appearances are some of the few occasions that Pynchon's voice has been broadcast in the media.]]
Responding to the image which has been manufactured in the media over the years, Pynchon made two cameo animated appearances on the television series ''[[The Simpsons]]'' in 2004. The first occurs in the episode "[[Diatribe of a Mad Housewife]]", in which [[Marge Simpson]] becomes a novelist. He plays himself, with a paper bag over his head, and provides a blurb for Marge's book, speaking in a broad Long Island accent: "Here's your quote: 'Thomas Pynchon loved this book, almost as much as he loves cameras!'" He then starts yelling at passing cars: "Hey, over here, have your picture taken with a reclusive author! Today only, we'll throw in a free autograph! But, wait! There's more!"<ref>{{cite web|url=http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_film_tv.html |title=Pynchon References on TV |publisher=themodernword.com |access-date=December 10, 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101130115328/http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_film_tv.html |archive-date=November 30, 2010 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://themodernword.com/pynchon/ketzan_simpsons.htm |title=Literary Titan Thomas Pynchon Breaks 40-Year Silence&nbsp;– on ''The Simpsons''! |first=Eric |last=Ketzan |publisher=themodernword.com |access-date=December 10, 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110311101734/http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/ketzan_simpsons.htm |archive-date=March 11, 2011 }}</ref> In his second appearance, in "[[All's Fair in Oven War]]", Pynchon's dialogue consists entirely of [[pun]]s on his novel titles ("These wings are ''V''-licious! I'll put this recipe in ''The Gravity's Rainbow Cookbook'', right next to 'The Frying of [[Latke]] 49'."). The cartoon representation of Pynchon reappears in a third, non-speaking cameo, as a guest at the fictional WordLoaf convention depicted in the 18th season episode "[[Moe'N'a Lisa]]". It first aired on November 19, 2006, the Sunday before ''Against the Day'' was released. According to [[Al Jean]] on the 15th season DVD episode commentary, Pynchon wanted to do the series because his son was a big fan.

During pre-production of "All's Fair in Oven War", Pynchon faxed one page from the script to producer [[Matt Selman]] with several handwritten edits to his lines. Of particular emphasis was Pynchon's outright refusal to utter the line "No wonder [[Homer Simpson|Homer]] is such a fat-ass." Pynchon's objection apparently had nothing to do with the salty language. He wrote in a footnote to the edit, "Homer is my role model and I can't speak ill of him."<ref>{{cite web|last1=Krumboltz|first1=Mike|title=Thomas Pynchon Draws the Line at Making Fun of Homer Simpson's Big Butt|date=September 4, 2014|url=https://tv.yahoo.com/blogs/tv-news/thomas-pynchon-simpsons-175632030.html|publisher=Yahoo TV|access-date=September 5, 2014|archive-date=September 5, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140905123522/https://tv.yahoo.com/blogs/tv-news/thomas-pynchon-simpsons-175632030.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last1=Selman|first1=Matt|title=Matt Selman|url=https://twitter.com/mattselman/status/505082780561051649|website=Matt Selman's Twitter Account|publisher=Twitter|access-date=September 5, 2014|quote=The fax sent to us by Thomas Pynchon with his jokes written on the script page|archive-date=September 2, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140902224550/https://twitter.com/mattselman/status/505082780561051649|url-status=live}}</ref>

In celebration of the centenary of [[George Orwell]]'s birth, Pynchon wrote a new foreword to Orwell's ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]''. The introduction presents a brief biography of Orwell as well as a reflection on some of the critical responses to ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. Pynchon also offers his own reflection in the introduction that "what is perhaps [most] important, indeed necessary, to a working prophet, is to be able to see deeper than most of us into the human soul."<ref>{{cite book|last1=Orwell|first1=George|title=Nineteen Eighty-Four|date=2003|publisher=Plume, Harcourt & Brace|location=New York|isbn=978-0-452-28423-4|url=https://archive.org/details/nineteeneightyfo00orwe_1}}</ref>

In July 2006, [[Amazon (company)|Amazon]] created a page showing an upcoming 992-page, untitled Pynchon novel. A description of the soon-to-be published novel appeared on Amazon purporting to be written by Pynchon himself. The description was taken down, prompting speculation over its authenticity, but the blurb was soon back up along with the novel's title, ''Against the Day''.

Shortly before ''Against the Day'' was published, Pynchon's prose appeared in the program for "''[[The Daily Show]]'': Ten Fu@#ing Years (The Concert)", a retrospective on [[Jon Stewart]]'s comedy-news broadcast ''The Daily Show''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_dailyshow.html |title=Pynchon References on TV |publisher=themodernword.com |access-date=December 10, 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101130114945/http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_dailyshow.html |archive-date=November 30, 2010 }}</ref>

On December 6, 2006, Pynchon joined a campaign by many other major authors to clear [[Ian McEwan]] of plagiarism charges by sending a [[typewritten]] letter to his British publisher, which was published in the ''[[Daily Telegraph]]'' newspaper.<ref name=reynolds2006>{{cite news|last1=Reynolds|first1=Nigel|title=Recluse speaks out to defend McEwan|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1536152/Recluse-speaks-out-to-defend-McEwan.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220112/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1536152/Recluse-speaks-out-to-defend-McEwan.html |archive-date=January 12, 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|access-date=September 26, 2014|work=The Telegraph|date=December 6, 2006}}{{cbignore}}</ref>

Pynchon's 2009 [[YouTube]] promotional teaser for the novel ''Inherent Vice''<ref>{{cite web |title=Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjWKPdDk0_U |website=YouTube | date=August 4, 2009 |publisher=Penguin Books USA |access-date=December 31, 2022 |archive-date=December 31, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221231214633/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjWKPdDk0_U |url-status=live }}</ref> is the second time a recording of his voice has been released to mainstream outlets (the first being his appearances on ''The Simpsons'').<ref name=kurutz2009 />

===2010s===
In 2012, Pynchon's novels were released in e-book format, ending a long holdout by the author. Publisher Penguin Press reported that the novels' length and complex page layouts made it a challenge to convert them to a digital format. Though they had produced a promotional video for the June release, Penguin had no expectation Pynchon's public profile would change in any fashion.<ref>{{cite news |author=Bosman |first=Julie |date=June 12, 2012 |title=After Long Resistance, Pynchon Allows Novels to Be Sold as E-Books |newspaper=The New York Times, Media Decoder blog |url=http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/after-long-resistance-pynchon-allows-novels-to-be-sold-as-e-books/ |access-date=June 17, 2012 |archive-date=June 17, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120617081454/http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/after-long-resistance-pynchon-allows-novels-to-be-sold-as-e-books/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

In 2013, his son, Jackson Pynchon, graduated from [[Columbia University]], where he was affiliated with [[St. Anthony Hall]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Phillips |first=Kaitlin |date=February 28, 2013 |title=The Not-So-Secret Society |url=http://columbiaspectator.com/eye/2013/02/28/not-so-secret-society/ |access-date=August 13, 2020 |website=[[Columbia Daily Spectator]] |archive-date=January 26, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210126142045/https://www.columbiaspectator.com/eye/2013/02/28/not-so-secret-society/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Trotter |first=J. K. |date=June 17, 2013 |title=Thomas Pynchon Returns to New York, Where He's Always Been |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2013/06/thomas-pynchon-back-new-york/313257/ |access-date=August 13, 2020 |website=[[The Atlantic]] |language=en-US |archive-date=November 11, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201111183618/https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2013/06/thomas-pynchon-back-new-york/313257/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

In September 2014, [[Josh Brolin]] told ''The New York Times'' that Pynchon had made a cameo in the [[Inherent Vice (film)|''Inherent Vice'' film adaptation]]. This led to a sizable online hunt for the author's appearance, eventually targeting actor Charley Morgan, whose small role as a doctor led many to believe he was Pynchon. Morgan, son of ''[[M*A*S*H (TV series)|M*A*S*H]]''{{'}}s [[Harry Morgan]], claimed that [[Paul Thomas Anderson]], whom he described as a friend, had told him that such a cameo did not exist. Despite this, nothing has been directly confirmed by Anderson or [[Warner Bros. Pictures]].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Hendrickson |first1=John |date=January 22, 2015 |title=We're Still Trying to Find the Thomas Pynchon Inherent Vice Cameo |url=http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a31769/pynchon-inherent-vice-cameo/ |access-date=November 16, 2016 |website=[[Esquire (magazine)|Esquire]] |archive-date=November 17, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161117063009/http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a31769/pynchon-inherent-vice-cameo/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Daly |first1=Kyle |date=June 4, 2015 |title=Maybe Thomas Pynchon wasn't in Inherent Vice after all |url=http://www.avclub.com/article/maybe-thomas-pynchon-wasnt-inherent-vice-after-all-220352 |access-date=November 16, 2016 |website=[[The A.V. Club]] |archive-date=November 16, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161116230053/http://www.avclub.com/article/maybe-thomas-pynchon-wasnt-inherent-vice-after-all-220352 |url-status=live }}</ref>

On November 6, 2018, Pynchon was photographed near his apartment in New York's [[Upper West Side]] district when he went to vote with his son. The photo was published by the ''[[National Enquirer]]'' and was said to be the first photo of him "in decades".<ref>{{Cite news |last=Fernández |first=Laura |date=January 18, 2019 |title=Cazar a Pynchon |language=es |work=[[El País]] |url=https://elpais.com/cultura/2019/01/17/actualidad/1547740942_812934.html |access-date=June 24, 2023 |issn=1134-6582 |archive-date=August 4, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190804075934/https://elpais.com/cultura/2019/01/17/actualidad/1547740942_812934.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

===2020s===
In December 2022, the [[Huntington Library]] announced that it had acquired the literary archive, including typescripts and drafts of each of Pynchon's novels, handwritten notes, correspondence with publishers, and research.<ref>{{Cite web |date=December 14, 2022 |title=The Huntington Acquires Thomas Pynchon Archive |url=https://huntington.org/news/news-release-huntington-acquires-thomas-pynchon-archive |access-date=June 24, 2023 |website=[[Huntington Library]] |language=en |archive-date=December 14, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221214194550/https://huntington.org/news/news-release-huntington-acquires-thomas-pynchon-archive |url-status=live }}</ref> 

==Bibliography==
{{Main|Thomas Pynchon bibliography}}
* ''[[V.]]'' (1963)
* ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]'' (1966)
* ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'' (1973)
* ''[[Slow Learner]]'' (1984), collection of previously published short stories
* ''[[Vineland]]'' (1990)
* ''[[Mason & Dixon]]'' (1997)
* ''[[Against the Day]]'' (2006)
* ''[[Inherent Vice]]'' (2009)
* ''[[Bleeding Edge (novel)|Bleeding Edge]]'' (2013)
* ''[[Shadow Ticket]] '' (2025)

== See also ==

* {{anl|Hysterical realism}}
* {{anl|Postmodern literature}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Further reading==
* Kharpertian, Theodore D. ''Thomas Pynchon and Postmodern American Satire'' pp.&nbsp;20–2, in Kharpertian ''A Hand to Turn the Time: The Menippean Satires of Thomas Pynchon''.
* McHale, Brian (1981), ''Thomas Pychon: A Portrait of the Artist as a Missing Person''. ''[[Cencrastus]]'' No. 5 (Summer 1981), pp.&nbsp;2 – 7, {{issn|0264-0856}}
* Stevenson, Randall (1983). Review of ''The Small Rain''. ''Cencrastus'', No. 11 (New Year 1983), pp.&nbsp;40 & 41, {{issn|0264-0856}}

==External links==
:''The following links were last verified on May 31, 2017.''
{{Spoken Wikipedia|date=March 16, 2006|Thomas_Pynchon_(Part_1).ogg|Thomas_Pynchon_(Part_2).ogg}}
* {{Wikiquote-inline}}
* ''[https://inherent-vice.com/ Inherent Vice Diagrammed]'' A reader's guide to Pynchon's novel ''[[Inherent Vice]]'', with diagrams showing all the character relationships, a character-relationship index, and chapter and plot summaries.
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Thomas Pynchon}}
* {{ISFDB name}}
* [http://www.thomaspynchon.com/ Thomas Pynchon&nbsp;– ThomasPynchon.com]
* [http://pynchonwiki.com/ The Thomas Pynchon Wiki]
* ''[https://pynchonnotes.openlibhums.org Pynchon Notes]'' – a journal operated from 1979 and 2009 by the [[Miami University]] in [[Oxford, Ohio]], archived by the [[Open Library of Humanities]].
* ''{{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20170430002251/http://pynchoninpublicpodcast.com/ Pynchon in Public Podcast]}}'', a podcast going through each of Pynchon's novels, one episode at a time.
* [http://shipwrecklibrary.com/the-modern-word/pynchon/spermatikos-logos/ Spermatikos Logos - Thomas Pynchon on ''The Modern Word'']

{{Thomas Pynchon}}
{{NBA for Fiction 1950–1974}}
{{Authority control}}

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