Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. 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 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. Pynchon followed with the novels Vineland (1990), Mason & Dixon (1997), Against the Day (2006), Inherent Vice (2009), which was adapted for film in 2014, and Bleeding Edge (2013). Pynchon's latest novel, Shadow Ticket, was published in 2025.