Pynchon, Thomas - , 1937–, American novelist, b. Glen Cove, N.Y., grad. Cornell Univ., 1958. Pynchon is noted for his amazingly fertile imagination, his wild sense of humor, and the teeming complexity of his novels. He is sometimes grouped with authors of black humor (such as Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller), who turned from realism to fantasy to depict 20th-century American life. His early novels include V. (1963) and The Crying of Lot 49 (1966). His masterpiece is Gravity's Rainbow (1973, National Book Award), which displays his diverse erudition. Set in London during World War II, it is a discursive rumination on war and death. In 1984, he published a collection of early writings, Slow Learner. His later novels are Vineland (1990), the witty and encyclopedic Mason & Dixon (1997), and the sprawling Against the Day (2006).

See studies by T. Tanner (1982), P. L. Cooper (1983), D. Seed (1988), S. C. Weisenburger (1988), J. Dugdale (1990), A. McHoul and D. Wills (1990), J. W. Slade (1990), J. Chambers (1992), H. Berressem (1993), A. W. Brownlie (2000), A. Mangen and R. Gaasland, ed. (2002), N. Abbas, ed. (2003), and H. Bloom, ed. (2003).

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