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Thomas Pynchon

(High School)


I've gotten about half way through Gravity's Rainbow. I tried to write down all the characters while I was reading it in the 90's. It's too chaotic for me. 

The below video introduction says it's a bit of a slog. But now I understand that difficult novels are appreciated because they are not accessible. You can read and reread the novels many times. Some books I read and I think I never need to reread that book again; it's plot based, not complex. Mind you a good plot isn't to be sniffed at. But difficult close to obscurity is also interesting. Joyce comes to mind. I started enjoying the complexity and obscurity due to time of Shakespeare. So now I want to approach these works. 

I'm a whole to the parts learner, which makes Pynchon difficult, but I just read about what I'm reading and I get the gestalt. Perhaps later I can appreciate without resorting to that. I'm going to try reading Vineland with his subreddit to actually complete one of his books.

His Nobel prize was taken back? Wow. 

From his Wikipedia entry says: "American literary critic Harold Bloom named him as one of the four major American novelists of his time, along with Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, and Cormac McCarthy." I've read all of Roth and Blood Meridian by McCarthy, and some DeLillo. Anyway, I'd like to read more Pynchon. Maybe I'll do it chronologically. Or maybe I'll go in reverse. 

Video Introduction

He suggests watch the movie of Inherent Vice (2014) to get the plot and then you can read.


Here is a list of his works (x=read):

V. (1963) x

The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) x

Gravity's Rainbow (1973) I read half this in the 90's when I wasn't as patient and sophisticated of a reader as I am now. Trying again 12/17/22.

Slow Learner (1984) — collection of previously published short stories

Vineland (1990) x

Mason & Dixon (1997)

Against the Day (2006)

Inherent Vice (2009)x

Bleeding Edge (2013) x


Personally, the order I would read this is as follows: California novels: CoL49, Vineland, Inherent Vice, then V and GR. Then it's go fish I guess with the last 3 novels.


Links to articles and Wiki:

Wikipedia Entry

The fake hermit: This is an excellent article by a Brazilian NATÁLIA PORTINARI. Here is a funny little story: "The Army man eventually lost contact with the writer, but years later he spotted Pynchon on the street. “I was coming back from that Mexican restaurant, and he was obviously heading towards it. And there was a pay phone on the street. But he looks up and sees me and gets that expression on his face, like ‘I recognize you from somewhere.’ And I said, ‘Hi, Tom,’ and the payphone starts to ring. And he looks at me, looks at the payphone, turns around and runs in the other direction. It’s absolutely true, that’s what happened. I answered the pay phone. Why not? There was no one there.”"

Supposedly Pynchon lives in NYC. He could be any of the 80 year old men shuffling about on the Upper West Side.

Pynchon Wiki

Is It OK To Be A Luddite? by Thomas Pynchon in NY Times. From the Bleeding Edge, here is a quote:

"“Yep, and your Internet was their invention, this magical convenience that creeps now like a smell through the smallest details of our lives, the shopping, the housework, the homework, the taxes, absorbing our energy, eating up our precious time. And there’s no innocence. Anywhere. Never was. It was conceived in sin, the worst possible.”"

Thomas Pynchon in New York Times

Atlantic Article

New Yorker

"V" at L

Supposedly he's in this terrible grainy footage on CNN, unidentified. I say leave him alone.

Have You Seen This Man (Guardian) Review of Documentary called Thomas Pynchon: A Journey into the Mind of [P.]

Reddit Reading Group of Gravity's Rainbow

Thomas Pynchon Unmasked

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