This document provides biographical information about author Thomas Pynchon in bullet point form. It notes that he was born in 1937 in Long Island, New York, graduated high school early with honors, attended Cornell University but left to serve in the Navy, returned to Cornell to earn his English degree, and is most famous for his novels like V., The Crying of Lot 49, and Gravity's Rainbow. The document also provides some details about Pynchon's writing styles and themes around postmodernism and avoidance of public exposure.
2. Born on May 8th, 1937
Long Island, New York
Graduated from High School at age 16
Salutatorian
Highest English grade
Went to Cornell
After sophomore year left to serve in the Navy
Returned to Cornell
Degree in English
3. Wrote 5 short stories in 2 years
“Entropy”
Most famous for his novels
V.
The Crying Lot of 49
Gravity’s Rainbow
Vineland
Mason & Dixon
Won William Faulkner Foundation Award for best
first novel of the year
Won the Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Foundation
Award for “The Crying of Lot 49”
Another piece by Pynchon was selected for the
Pulitzer Prize in Lit. but never received the award
Unreadable, turgid, overwritten, and obscene
4. Racism, imperialism and religion
Blurs difference between high and low
class
Deconstruction
Defining characteristic of postmodernism
Song lyrics and musical numbers
Physics and Navy background
5. “the world’s most famous literary recluse”
Avoided public exposure
Lives in California
Against the Day
November 2006
6. Set in Washington, D.C. in February of
1957
Meatball Mulligan throws a huge party
Many strange guests
Random people show up
-Saul
-College girls
-Navy Men
Chaos ensues and Mulligan fixes things for
7. A man named Callisto and a girl named
Aubade live in a hermetically sealed
hothouse
Callisto is holding a dying bird and ranting
about the laws of thermodynamics
Aubade checks the temperature frequently
and it is always 37 degrees
The bird dies
Aubade breaks the windows