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105-418: Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. ( / ˈ p ɪ n tʃ ɒ n / PIN -chon , commonly / ˈ p ɪ n tʃ ən / PIN -chən ; born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes , including history , music , science , and mathematics . For Gravity's Rainbow , Pynchon won

210-538: A MacArthur Fellowship and, since the early 1990s at least, he has been frequently cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature . Pynchon provided a blurb for Don DeLillo 's novel Mao II , about a reclusive novelist and partly inspired by the fatwa on Salman Rushdie: "This novel's a beauty. DeLillo takes us on a breathtaking journey, beyond all the official versions of our daily history, behind all

315-537: A 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 himself. A 2014 film adaptation of the same name was directed by Paul Thomas Anderson . Bleeding Edge takes place in Manhattan's Silicon Alley during "the lull between

420-512: 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." The Crying of Lot 49 won the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award shortly after publication. 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",

525-516: A '60s surf band called The Corvairs, while Isaiah played in a 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 "Sometimes, it's hard to be a woman." He also alludes to classical music; in V .,

630-760: A 1990 series of short stories about the Vietnam War . Fictional works that explicitly involve supernatural, magical, or scientifically impossible elements are often classified under the genre of fantasy , including Lewis Carroll 's 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland , J. R. R. Tolkien 's The Lord of the Rings , and J. K. Rowling 's Harry Potter series. Creators of fantasy sometimes introduce imaginary creatures and beings such as dragons and fairies. Types of written fiction in prose are distinguished by relative length and include: Fiction writing

735-404: A certain point of view. The distinction between the two may be best defined from the viewpoint of the audience, according to whom a work is non-fiction if its people, settings, and plot are perceived entirely as historically or factually real, while a work is regarded as fiction if it deviates from reality in any of those areas. The distinction is further obscured by a philosophical understanding, on

840-603: 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 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

945-447: A completely imaginary way or been followed by major new events that are completely imaginary (the genre of alternative history ). Or, it depicts impossible technology or technology that defies current scientific understandings or capabilities (the genre of science fiction ). Contrarily, realistic fiction involves a story whose basic setting (time and location in the world) is, in fact, real and whose events could believably happen in

1050-475: A figure from history, Bonnie Prince Charlie , and takes part in the Battle of Prestonpans . Some works of fiction are slightly or greatly re-imagined based on some originally true story, or a reconstructed biography. Often, even when the fictional story is based on fact, there may be additions and subtractions from the true story to make it more interesting. An example is Tim O'Brien 's The Things They Carried ,

1155-438: A historical novel about Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon had circulated as early as the 1980s; the novel, Mason & Dixon , was published in 1997 to critical acclaim. His 2009 novel Inherent Vice was adapted into a feature film by Paul Thomas Anderson in 2014. Pynchon is notoriously reclusive from the media; few photographs of him have been published, and rumors about his location and identity have circulated since

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1260-700: A major impact on the creation and distribution of fiction, calling into question the feasibility of copyright as a means to ensure royalties are paid to copyright holders. Also, digital libraries such as Project Gutenberg make public domain texts more readily available. The combination of inexpensive home computers, the Internet, and the creativity of its users has also led to new forms of fiction, such as interactive computer games or computer-generated comics. Countless forums for fan fiction can be found online, where loyal followers of specific fictional realms create and distribute derivative stories. The Internet

1365-490: A mixture of printed and cursive letters, "half printing, half script." In 1958, Pynchon and Sale wrote part or all of a science-fiction musical, Minstrel Island , which portrayed a dystopian future in which IBM rules the world. Pynchon received his B.A. with distinction as a member of Phi Beta Kappa in June 1959. After leaving Cornell, Pynchon began to work on his first novel, V . From February 1960 to September 1962, he

1470-574: 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." 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

1575-606: A new, untitled novel by Pynchon was announced along with a description written by Pynchon himself: "Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I , this novel moves from the 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

1680-497: 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." After resigning from Boeing, Pynchon spent some time in New York and Mexico before moving to California, where he

1785-611: A painful and delicate love scene and then roar, without pause, into the sounds and echoes of a drugged and drunken orgy." Pynchon often engages in parodies or pastiches 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.' ... This

1890-399: A parody of a 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 filters . It proposes a series of seemingly incredible interconnections between these events and other similarly bizarre revelations that confront the novel's protagonist, Oedipa Maas. Like V., the novel contains

1995-602: A record released by The Fool in the 1960s (having magically recovered the latter instrument, his " harp ", in a German stream in 1945, after losing it down the toilet in 1939 at the Roseland Ballroom in Roxbury , Boston , to the strains of the jazz standard " 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

2100-598: A story where it will do some good can hardly be classed as a felonious act-- it is simply what we do." Inherent Vice was published in August 2009. A synopsis and brief extract from the novel, along with the novel's title, Inherent Vice , and dust jacket image, were printed in Penguin Press' Summer 2009 catalogue. The book was advertised by the publisher as "part- noir , part- psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon— private eye Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of

2205-445: A strong affinity with the practitioners and artifacts of low culture , including comic books and cartoons , pulp fiction , popular films, television programs , cookery , urban myths , 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. Pynchon makes frequent musical allusions. McClintic Sphere in V.

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2310-570: A subset (written fiction that aligns to a particular genre ), or its opposite: an evaluative label for written fiction that comprises popular culture , as artistically or intellectually inferior to high culture . Regardless, fiction is commonly broken down into a variety of genres: categories of fiction, each differentiated by a particular unifying tone or style ; set of narrative techniques , archetypes , or other tropes; media content ; or other popularly defined criterion. Science fiction predicts or supposes technologies that are not realities at

2415-656: 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." In her review of Mason & Dixon , Michiko Kakutani writes: "The Great Big Theme in all of Thomas Pynchon's novels, from V. (1963) through Gravity's Rainbow (1973) and Vineland (1990) has been: Is

2520-430: A traditional narrow sense, "fiction" refers to written narratives in prose – often referring specifically to novels , novellas , and short stories . More broadly, however, fiction encompasses imaginary narratives expressed in any medium , including not just writings but also live theatrical performances , films , television programs , radio dramas , comics , role-playing games , and video games . Typically,

2625-501: A university or a similar institution, and with the continuation of such positions determined not by book sales but by critical acclaim by other established literary authors and critics. On the other hand, he suggests, genre fiction writers tend to support themselves by book sales. However, in an interview, John Updike lamented that "the category of 'literary fiction' has sprung up recently to torment people like me who just set out to write books, and if anybody wanted to read them, terrific,

2730-643: A wealth of references to science and technology and to 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 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. 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

2835-496: 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." Pynchon reportedly attended lectures given by Vladimir Nabokov , who then taught literature at Cornell. Although Nabokov later said that he had no memory of Pynchon, Nabokov's wife Véra , who graded her husband's class papers, commented that she remembered his distinctive handwriting as

2940-467: A wide range of novels and non-fiction works. He contributed an appreciation of Oakley Hall 's Warlock in a feature called "A Gift of Books" in the December 1965 issue of Holiday . Pynchon wrote that Hall "has restored to the myth of Tombstone its full, mortal, blooded humanity ... It is this deep sensitivity to abysses that makes Warlock , I think, one of our best American novels. For we are

3045-434: A written work of fiction that: Literary fiction is often used as a synonym for literature , in the narrow sense of writings specifically considered to be an art form. While literary fiction is sometimes regarded as superior to genre fiction, the two are not mutually exclusive, and major literary figures have employed the genres of science fiction, crime fiction , romance , etc., to create works of literature. Furthermore,

3150-401: 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

3255-508: Is a part of media studies. Examples of prominent fictionalization in the creative arts include those in the general context of World War II in popular culture and specifically Nazi German leaders such as Adolf Hitler in popular culture and Reinhard Heydrich in popular culture . For instance, American actor and comedian Charlie Chaplin portrayed the eccentric despot Adenoid Hynkel in the 1940 satirical film The Great Dictator . The unhinged, unintelligent figure fictionalized real events from

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3360-446: Is also used for the development of blog fiction , where a story is delivered through a blog either as flash fiction or serial blog, and collaborative fiction , where a story is written sequentially by different authors, or the entire text can be revised by anyone using a wiki . The definition of literary fiction is controversial. It may refer to any work of fiction in a written form. However, various other definitions exist, including

3465-519: Is believed to have skipped two grades before high school. Pynchon attended Oyster Bay High School in Oyster Bay , where he was awarded "student of the year" and contributed short fictional pieces to his school newspaper. These juvenilia incorporated some of the literary motifs and recurring subject matter he would use throughout his career: oddball names, sophomoric humor, illicit drug use, and paranoia. Pynchon graduated from high school in 1953 at

3570-439: Is characterized by a lesser degree of adherence to realistic or plausible individuals, events, or places, while the umbrella genre of realistic fiction is characterized by a greater degree. For instance, speculative fiction may depict an entirely imaginary universe or one in which the laws of nature do not strictly apply (often, the sub-genre of fantasy ). Or, it depicts true historical moments, except that they have concluded in

3675-557: Is commonly classified as postmodern . Pynchon makes frequent allusions 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 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 numbers are

3780-428: Is hard to fault as pastiche, and yet it moves beyond pastiche, with none of the cramped self-amusement that usually attends the genre. What is more, it bears the signature—wholly unmistakable but written, as it were, in invisible ink—of Pynchon himself." Pynchon includes deliberate anachronisms : Lane notes that "the shipboard scenes include an honorary mention of a sailor named Pat O'Brian , 'the best Yarn-Spinner in all

3885-496: Is known as fictionalization . The opposite circumstance, in which the physical world or a real turn of events seem influenced by past fiction, is commonly described by the phrase " life imitating art ". The latter phrase is popularity associated with the Anglo-Irish fiction writer Oscar Wilde . The alteration of actual happenings into a fictional format, with this involving a dramatic representation of real events or people,

3990-446: Is known as both fictionalization , or, more narrowly for visual performance works like in theatre and film, dramatization . According to the academic publication Oxford Reference , a work set up this way will have a "narrative based partly or wholly on fact but written as if it were fiction" such that "[f]ilms and broadcast dramas of this kind often bear the label 'based on a true story'." In intellectual research, evaluating this process

4095-492: Is most long-established in the realm of literature (written narrative fiction), the broad study of the nature, function, and meaning of fiction is called literary theory , and the narrower interpretation of specific fictional texts is called literary criticism (with subsets like film criticism and theatre criticism also now long-established). Aside from real-world connections, some fictional works may depict characters and events within their own context, entirely separate from

4200-779: Is often compared to that of James Joyce 's Ulysses . Some scholars have hailed it as the greatest American post-WW2 novel, and it has similarly been described as "literally an anthology of postmodernist themes and devices". Richard Locke , reviewing it in The New York Times , wrote that "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 four years ago; its technical and verbal resources bring to mind Melville and Faulkner ." The major portion of Gravity's Rainbow takes place in Europe in

4305-427: Is often described as "elegantly written, lyrical, and ... layered". The tone of literary fiction can be darker than genre fiction, while the pacing of literary fiction may be slower than popular fiction. As Terrence Rafferty notes, "literary fiction, by its nature, allows itself to dawdle, to linger on stray beauties even at the risk of losing its way". Based on how literary fiction is defined, genre fiction may be

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4410-408: 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

4515-407: Is the process by which an author or creator produces a fictional work. Some elements of the writing process may be planned in advance, while others may come about spontaneously. Fiction writers use different writing styles and have distinct writers' voices when writing fictional stories. The use of real events or real individuals as direct inspiration for imaginary events or imaginary individuals

4620-740: The American Republic . The dust jacket notes that it features appearances from 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." 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." The American critic Harold Bloom hailed

4725-785: The Suez Crisis . According to recollections from his Navy friends, Pynchon said at the time that he did not intend to complete his college education. 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 Army ; subsequently, however, episodes and characters throughout Pynchon's fiction draw freely upon his own experiences in

4830-629: The William Faulkner Foundation Award For Notable First Novel and was a finalist for the National Book Award. George Plimpton gave the book a positive review in The New York Times . He described it as 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

4935-422: The human condition . In general, it focuses on "introspective, in-depth character studies" of "interesting, complex and developed" characters. This contrasts with genre fiction where plot is the central concern. Usually in literary fiction the focus is on the "inner story" of the characters who drive the plot, with detailed motivations to elicit "emotional involvement" in the reader. The style of literary fiction

5040-497: The " plot ", in various senses of that term: 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. If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers. – Gravity's Rainbow The novel invokes anti-authority sentiments, often through violations of narrative conventions and integrity. For example, as

5145-521: The 18th and 19th centuries. They were often associated with Enlightenment ideas such as empiricism and agnosticism . Realism developed as a literary style at this time. New forms of mass media developed in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, including popular-fiction magazines and early film. Interactive fiction was developed in the late-20th century through video games. Certain basic elements define all works of narrative , including all works of narrative fiction. Namely, all narratives include

5250-549: The 1960s. Pynchon's most recent novel, Bleeding Edge , was published in 2013. Thomas Pynchon was born on May 8, 1937, in Glen Cove , Long Island , New York, one of three children of engineer and politician Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Sr. (1907–1995) and Katherine Frances Bennett (1909–1996), a nurse. During his childhood, Pynchon alternately attended Episcopal services with his father and Roman Catholic services with his mother. A "voracious reader and precocious writer", Pynchon

5355-544: The 1973 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction . He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American novelists. Hailing from 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). Rumors of

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5460-543: The 1974 National Book Award with A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer (split award). That same year, the Pulitzer Prize For Fiction panel unanimously recommended Gravity's Rainbow for the award, but the Pulitzer board vetoed the jury's recommendation, describing the novel as "unreadable", "turgid", "overwritten", and in parts "obscene". (No Pulitzer Prize For Fiction

5565-497: The Day as "lengthy and rambling" and "a baggy monster of a book", while negative appraisals condemned the novel for its "silliness" or characterized its action as "fairly pointless" and remained unimpressed by its "grab bag of themes". In 2006, Pynchon wrote a letter defending Ian McEwan against charges of plagiarism in his novel Atonement : "Oddly enough, those of us who write historical fiction do feel some obligation to accuracy. It

5670-565: The Human Trampoline, is bouncing into Graceland." The novel is set in California in the 1980s and 1960s and describes the relationship between an FBI COINTELPRO agent and a female radical filmmaker. Its strong socio-political undercurrents detail the constant battle between authoritarianism and communalism , and the nexus between resistance and complicity, but with a typically Pynchonian sense of humor. In 1988, he received

5775-637: The Navy. His short story, "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna", was published in the Spring 1959 issue of Epoch . While at Cornell, Pynchon started his friendships with Richard Fariña , Kirkpatrick Sale , and David Shetzline . Pynchon would go on to dedicate Gravity's Rainbow to Fariña, and to serve as his best man and his pallbearer. In his introduction to Fariña's novel Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me , Pynchon recalls that "we also succeeded in getting on

5880-563: 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,

5985-528: The age of 16. That fall, he went to Cornell University to study engineering physics . At the end of his sophomore year, he enlisted to serve in the U.S. Navy . He attended boot camp at United States Naval Training Center Bainbridge , Maryland, then received training to be an electrician at a base in Norfolk, Virginia . In 1956, he was aboard the destroyer USS Hank in the Mediterranean during

6090-604: The audience's willing suspension of disbelief . The effects of experiencing fiction, and the way the audience is changed by the new information they discover, has been studied for centuries. Also, infinite fictional possibilities themselves signal the impossibility of fully knowing reality, provocatively demonstrating philosophical notions, such as there potentially being no criterion to measure constructs of reality. In contrast to fiction, creators of non-fiction assume responsibility for presenting information (and sometimes opinion) based only in historical and factual reality. Despite

6195-415: The audience, including elements such as romance , piracy , and religious ceremonies . Heroic romance was developed in medieval Europe , incorporating elements associated with fantasy , including supernatural elements and chivalry . The structure of the modern novel was developed by Miguel de Cervantes with Don Quixote in the early-17th century. The novel became a primary medium of fiction in

6300-577: The collapse of the dot-com boom and the terrible events of September 11 ." The novel was published on September 17, 2013, to positive reviews. 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

6405-610: 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 ..." (p. 681). Such an approach generates dynamic tension and moments of acute self-consciousness, as both reader and author seem drawn ever deeper into

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6510-581: The context of the real world. One realistic fiction sub-genre is historical fiction , centered around true major events and time periods in the past. The attempt to make stories feel faithful to reality or to more objectively describe details, and the 19th-century artistic movement that began to vigorously promote this approach, is called literary realism , which incorporates some works of both fiction and non-fiction. Storytelling has existed in all human cultures, and each culture incorporates different elements of truth and fiction into storytelling. Early fiction

6615-399: The decision as "a moment of temporary insanity", but noted that he was "too stubborn to let any of them go, let alone all of them." 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

6720-510: 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." The meticulously researched novel is a sprawling postmodernist saga recounting the lives and careers of the English astronomer Charles Mason and his partner, the surveyor Jeremiah Dixon , the drawers of the Mason–Dixon line , during the birth of

6825-442: The elements of character , conflict , narrative mode , plot , setting , and theme . Characters are individuals inside a work of story, conflicts are the tension or problem that drives characters' thoughts and actions, narrative modes are the ways in which a story is communicated, plots are the sequence of events in a story, settings are the story's locations in time and space, and themes are deeper messages or interpretations about

6930-748: The eternal variety." In 1964, his application to study mathematics as a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley was turned down. In 1966, Pynchon wrote a first-hand report on the aftermath and legacy of the Watts Riots in Los Angeles, titled "A Journey Into the Mind of Watts", and published in The New York Times Magazine . From the mid-1960s Pynchon has also regularly provided blurbs and introductions for

7035-474: The fictionality of a work is publicly expressed, so the audience expects the work to deviate to a greater or lesser degree from the real world rather than presenting, for instance, only factually accurate portrayals or characters who are actual people. Because fiction is generally understood as not adhering to the real world, the themes and context of a work, such as if and how it relates to real-world issues or events, are open to interpretation . Since fiction

7140-476: The final months of World War II and the weeks immediately following VE 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 dramatic irony whereby neither the characters nor the various narrative voices are aware of specific historical circumstances, such as the Holocaust and, except as hints, premonitions and mythography,

7245-538: The first published fiction of Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo , and early stories by Philip Roth , Stanley Elkin , and Joyce Carol Oates . Some other poets and writers who have appeared in the magazine are Jacob M. Appel , Annie Dillard , Rick DeMarinis , Jayne Anne Phillips , Ron Hansen , Andre Dubus , Amy Hempel , Lee K. Abbott , Charles Simic , Leslie Scalapino , Harriet Doerr , Denis Johnson , Ron Hansen , John L'Heureux , Jorie Graham , Micah Perks , and Rick Bass . The magazine claims that "all"

7350-412: The fleets,' and the current president might allow himself a small smile at the advice on Indian hemp which is offered to Cherrycoke as he prepares to set sail: 'If you must use the latter, do not inhale. Keep your memory working, young man!' Whether Thomas Pynchon himself would heed this counsel is hard to decide. His memory seems, as ever, not only to have gorged itself on facts and figures but to have kept

7455-506: The founder of Springfield, Massachusetts , in 1636, and thereafter a long line of Pynchon descendants found wealth and repute on American soil. Aspects of Pynchon's ancestry and family background have partially inspired his fiction writing, particularly in the Slothrop family histories related in the short story " The Secret Integration " (1964) and Gravity's Rainbow (1973). A collection of Pynchon's early short stories, Slow Learner ,

7560-508: The heart of everything." 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 , synchronicity , and entropy , there is a wealth of commentary and critical material, including reader's guides, books and scholarly articles, online concordances and discussions, and art works. Its artistic value

7665-574: The imperial period. Plasmatic narrative, following entirely invented characters and events, was developed through ancient drama and New Comedy . One common structure among early fiction is a series of strange and fantastic adventures as early writers test the limits of fiction writing. Milesian tales were an early example of fiction writing in Ancient Greece and Italy. As fiction writing developed in Ancient Greece, relatable characters and plausible scenarios were emphasized to better connect with

7770-441: The known physical universe: an independent fictional universe . The creative art of constructing such an imaginary world is known as worldbuilding . Literary critic James Wood argues that "fiction is both artifice and verisimilitude ", meaning that it requires both creative inventions as well as some acceptable degree of believability among its audience, a notion often encapsulated in the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge 's idea of

7875-581: The major anthologies have reproduced its work, including Best American Essays , The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses , Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards , Editor's Choice Awards , Best of the West , and New Stories from the South. The periodical also won the first O. Henry Award for best magazine of 1997. Some stories from Epoch that have been reprinted in anthologies had been picked out of

7980-508: The more the merrier. ... I'm a genre writer of a sort. I write literary fiction, which is like spy fiction or chick lit". Likewise, on The Charlie Rose Show , he argued that this term, when applied to his work, greatly limited him and his expectations of what might come of his writing, so he does not really like it. He suggested that all his works are literary, simply because "they are written in words". Literary fiction often involves social commentary , political criticism , or reflection on

8085-557: 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". 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?" . In an April 1964 letter to his agent, Candida Donadio, Pynchon wrote that he

8190-480: The novel as Pynchon's "masterpiece to date". Bloom named Pynchon as one of the four major American novelists of his time, along with Cormac McCarthy , Philip Roth and Don DeLillo . 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." A variety of rumors pertaining to

8295-465: 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 of Gravity's Rainbow in "neat, tiny script on engineer's quadrille paper ". Pynchon worked on the novel throughout the 1960s and early 1970s while he was living in California and Mexico City. Gravity's Rainbow shared

8400-493: The one hand, that the truth can be presented through imaginary channels and constructions, while, on the other hand, works of the imagination can just as well bring about significant new perspectives on, or conclusions about, truth and reality. All types of fiction invite their audience to explore real ideas, issues, or possibilities using an otherwise imaginary setting or using something similar to reality, though still distinct from it. The umbrella genre of speculative fiction

8505-600: The protagonist, Tyrone Slothrop, considers the fact 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-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.'" (p. 553) Encyclopedic in scope and often self-conscious in style,

8610-425: 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 ... Also in '59 we simultaneously picked up on what I still think is among the finest American novels, Oakley Hall 's Warlock . We set about getting others to read it too, and for

8715-547: 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." His earliest American ancestor, William Pynchon , emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony with the Winthrop Fleet in 1630, then became

8820-630: The short-lived BMG Catalyst label. Pynchon also wrote the liner notes for Nobody's Cool , the second album of indie rock 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 . Fiction Fiction is any creative work , chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals , events, or places that are imaginary or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history , fact , or plausibility. In

8925-553: The slush pile by MFA students. According to the Cornell Chronicle , Shannon Ravenel, editor of the anthology New Stories from the South: The Year's Best , said of Epoch , "It's the best. [...] Epoch is just consistently excellent." C. Michael Curtis, a senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly , said he considers Epoch "one of the top literary magazines in the country in terms of the consistent quality of

9030-541: The story that its audience is left to discuss and reflect upon. Traditionally, fiction includes novels, short stories, fables , legends , myths , fairy tales , epic and narrative poetry , plays (including operas , musicals , dramas, puppet plays , and various kinds of theatrical dances ). However, fiction may also encompass comic books , and many animated cartoons , stop motions , anime , manga , films , video games , radio programs , television programs ( comedies and dramas ), etc. The Internet has had

9135-448: The study of genre fiction has developed within academia in recent decades. The term is sometimes used such as to equate literary fiction to literature. The accuracy of this is debated. Neal Stephenson has suggested that, while any definition will be simplistic, there is today a general cultural difference between literary and genre fiction. On the one hand literary authors nowadays are frequently supported by patronage, with employment at

9240-462: The subject matter of Against the Day circulated for a number of years. Most specific of these were comments made by the former German minister of culture Michael Naumann , who stated that 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 . In July 2006,

9345-666: The then ongoing Second World War in a way that presented fascist individuals as humorously irrational and pathetic. Many other villains take direct inspiration from real people while having fictional accents, appearances, backgrounds, names, and so on. Epoch (American magazine) Epoch is staffed by faculty and graduate students from the English Department creative writing program, and edited by Michael Koch. Epoch appears in September, January, and May, with issues generally running 128 to 160 pages. The magazine

9450-509: The time of the work's creation: Jules Verne 's novel From the Earth to the Moon was published in 1865, but only in 1969 did astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first humans to land on the Moon. Historical fiction places imaginary characters into real historical events. In the 1814 historical novel Waverley , Sir Walter Scott 's fictional character Edward Waverley meets

9555-419: The title of the new book was reported to be Against the Day and a Penguin spokesperson confirmed that the synopsis was Pynchon's. 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 in advance to review the book. An edited version of Pynchon's synopsis

9660-535: The traditional view that fiction and non-fiction are opposites, some works (particularly in the modern era) blur this boundary, particularly works that fall under certain experimental storytelling genres—including some postmodern fiction , autofiction , or creative nonfiction like non-fiction novels and docudramas —as well as the deliberate literary fraud of falsely marketing fiction as nonfiction. Furthermore, even most works of fiction usually have elements of, or grounding in, truth of some kind, or truth from

9765-414: The whole lot down ... On the other hand, this book could have been conceived in the fumes of inhalation: it has a dreamed quality, an eagerness to be haunted ... Pynchon is furiously clever, but more important and, I suspect, more enduring, is his anatomy of melancholy, his conjuring of a doleful burlesque ... Good luck, and G-dspeed." Pynchon's prose, with its wide range of styles and subjects,

9870-440: The world dominated by conspiracy or chaos? Are there patterns, secret codes, hidden agendas -- in short, a hidden design -- to the bubble and turmoil of human existence, or is it all a product of chance? Are the paranoiacs onto something, or do the nihilists have the key to it all?" Pynchon's work explores philosophical, theological, and sociological ideas exhaustively, though in quirky and approachable ways. His writings demonstrate

9975-532: Was awarded that year and finalists were not recognized before 1980.) In 1975, Pynchon declined the William Dean Howells Medal . Along with Lot 49 , Gravity's Rainbow was included on Time '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

10080-472: Was closely associated with history and myth . Greek poets such as Homer , Hesiod , and Aesop developed fictional stories that were told first through oral storytelling and then in writing. Prose fiction was developed in Ancient Greece , influenced by the storytelling traditions of Asia and Egypt. Distinctly fictional work was not recognized as separate from historical or mythological stories until

10185-674: 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 surface-to-air missile deployed by the U.S. Air Force . 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 much raw material for Gravity's Rainbow . V. won

10290-497: Was established in 1947 by Baxter Hathaway, who arrived at Cornell University the year before to start a creative writing program. Initially, the magazine was a literary quarterly staffed by the English department. A story from the magazine's first volume was reprinted in Best American Short Stories and all of the fiction from that volume was cited in the anthology. In the 1950s and 1960s, Epoch featured

10395-614: Was facing a creative crisis, with 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." In the mid-1960s, Pynchon lived at 217 33rd St. in Manhattan Beach, California , in a small downstairs apartment. 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

10500-408: Was included on Time '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

10605-552: Was published in 1984, with a lengthy autobiographical introduction. In October of the same year, an article titled "Is It O.K. to Be a Luddite?" was published in The New York Times Book Review . 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." Another article, titled "Nearer, My Couch, to Thee",

10710-566: Was published in 1990 and disappointed some fans and critics. It did, however, receive a positive review from Salman Rushdie, who called it "free-flowing and light and funny and maybe the most readily accessible piece of writing the old Invisible Man ever came up with ... 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

10815-729: 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 " Sloth ". 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 Ayatollah for his novel The Satanic Verses . Pynchon wrote: "I pray that tolerance and respect for life prevail. I keep thinking of you." Pynchon's fourth novel, Vineland ,

10920-463: Was reportedly based for much of the 1960s and early 1970s, most notably in an apartment in Manhattan Beach , as he was composing what would become Gravity's Rainbow . A negative aspect that Pynchon retrospectively found in the hippie cultural and literary movement , both in the form of the Beats of the 1950s and the resurgence form of the 1960s, was that it "placed too much emphasis on youth, including

11025-401: 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." Other reviewers described Against

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