The Mystery of Pynchon

[Dave Monroe]

A literary recluse: The mystery of Pynchon

The cult writer is about to publish his first novel
for nine years. But the best-selling author of 'V' and
'Gravity's Rainbow' remains an enigma to his millions
of fans. 

By Louise Jury
Published: 17 August 2006

He is so elusive a writer that he makes Harper Lee
appear a socialite. He gives no interviews and shuns
all photo opportunities. Thomas Pynchon, cult figure
of American prose, is a nightmare for his publicists.

But the mystery surrounding the 69-year-old author
will serve only to increase the clamour when his next
novel, Against the Day, is published in December
simultaneously in the UK and the US. It will be his
first novel in nine years and only his sixth - plus a
collection of early fiction - since his astonishing
debut with V in 1963.

Finally announcing the date yesterday, Dan Franklin of
Jonathan Cape, his British publisher, said that to
have a new work was "incredibly exciting". He added:
"Against the Day is an epic that is awesome in its
scope and imagination."

Yet such is the secrecy surrounding this literary
great that it is not even clear when reviewers will
get to see the £25 tome. For clues as to its subject
matter, we are in the hands of the author himself for
now.

Pynchon outlined a novel yesterday that was vast in
ambition with a veritable dictionary of national
biography as the cast, down to cameo appearances by
the scientist Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi and Groucho
Marx.

But the author's description was so over the top that
he seemed almost to be irreverently mocking the
conventions of publicity even while apparently taking
part.

The novel, he said, spanned the period between the
Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after
the First World War but embraces a whole raft of
countries and other events.

"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." Parrying the interpretations
of future critics, he continued: "No reference to the
present day is intended or should be inferred."

Meanwhile, he indicated that features well-known to
his fans, such as "for the most part stupid songs"
would be included and "contrary-to-the-fact
occurrences occur". "If it is not the world, it is
what the world might be with a minor adjustment or
two. According to some, this is one of the main
purposes of fiction," he said.

It was a teasing statement surely designed to entice
the cult readership which saw his last work, Mason &
Dixon, sell out an initial 175,000 print run in the US
in around six weeks. Then, despite being criticised by
some as incomprehensible and stretching to an
intimidating 773 pages, the book was requisite reading
for the literati in his home nation. In the words of
his American publicist: "Reading Pynchon makes people
feel smart."

And readers clearly like the mystery of his identity.
What is known is that Thomas Pynchon was born on 8
May, 1937, on Long Island, New York. A gifted student,
he studied engineering physics at Cornell University,
but left for a spell in the American navy. It was a
period when he was photographed in a pose which is
much reproduced in the absence of any others. The navy
has also provided material for his books.

But when he returned to university, he switched to
studying English in a department where the author
Vladimir Nabokov was one of his professors. After
graduating in 1959, he worked briefly as a technical
writer before turning to fiction.

V, an absurdist comedy which introduced readers to
Pynchon's dense style, was published to acclaim as the
best first novel of the year in 1963.

Immediately added to the list of great new prose
modernists, in the mould of Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph
Heller, Pynchon followed V with The Crying of Lot 49
in 1966, the shortest and most accessible of his
works, which he later dismissed. Then in 1973 came
Gravity's Rainbow, a labyrinthine story where fact
cannot be separated from fantasy, set in the dying
days of the Second World War. It won the prestigious
National Book Award in the United States and was
unanimously recommended for the Pulitzer Prize by its
fiction jury. While the Pulitzer board rejected the
recommendation and condemned the novel as "unreadable"
and "overwritten", it remains probably his most
celebrated novel.

But it was followed by a long wait of 11 years until
Slow Learner, a collection of his early short stories
- with an introduction by Pynchon himself which
offered a rare and intriguing insight into his
thinking. In a masterclass to other writers, he warned
against approaching a story with a "theme, symbol, or
other abstract unifying agent" and making the
characters conform to it. He argued that writing
should have "some grounding in human reality". To
many, the introduction remains the biggest - arguably,
the only - clue to Pynchon's art.

In 1990 came Vineland, another novel packed with
eccentric characters and infused with a strong strain
of paranoia across different time frames. Then in 1997
came Mason & Dixon, which was a vast epic based on the
true story of British surveyors establishing the
boundary that lay at the heart of the American Civil
War.

This was, the New York Times reviewer said, "the old
Pynchon, the true Pynchon, the best Pynchon of all.
Mason & Dixon is a groundbreaking book, a book of
heart and fire and genius, and there is nothing quite
like it in our literature, except maybe V and
Gravity's Rainbow".

Such hyperbole makes clear the burden of expectation
which rests on the new work.

But if Against the Day, to be published on 5 December,
is the subject of fevered speculation over the coming
months, it will be no more than is routinely applied
to the details of the author's life. Pynchon is said
to be married to his literary agent with whom he has a
son. Although some believed he lived in California,
the location of his fourth novel, Vineland, and a
photograph of the author taken from behind on a
Manhattan street and published in New York magazine a
decade ago, suggested that he was instead resident in
the Big Apple.

Despite his aversion to publicity, which is on a par
with that of Catcher in the Rye author JD Salinger,
Pynchon has not avoided the modern world entirely. In
1968, he signed a newspaper pledge with other writers
and editors not to pay a proposed tax to fund the
Vietnam war.

He has written a number of articles and reviews in the
American media, including an article offering support
to Salman Rushdie after the fatwa was pronounced
against him.

And he has even "appeared" in cameo - and, obviously,
animated - appearances in The Simpsons. Mocking his
own reclusiveness, he first appeared in the show with
a paper bag over his head to proffer a supportive
quote for a novel written by Marge Simpson.

Regarded as hugely influential on a whole generation
of innovative younger writers including the American
David Foster Wallace and Britain's David Mitchell,
Pynchon remains one of the grand old men of American
fiction.

But whether his new book will become a bestseller
remains to be seen. Rodney Troubridge, a fiction
expert at Waterstone's bookstores, said: "He's one of
the heavyweights, one of the top six heavyweight
American writers - and they do have heavyweight
writers. It's nice to have such a book after nine
years. People will be interested."

What worries Rodney Troubridge is the price tag,
particularly when, as with all cult authors, so many
of the potential readership are students.

"At £25, it's pretty steep. I can see it doing better
in paperbacks for real punters, the people who love
him."

So despite the fame, the mystery and the awards, the
stark truth is that in Britain, at least, he is not a
big seller. But, as Mr Troubridge conceded: "He is a
name." A name, of course, without a face.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1219732.ece

The blurb then follows, so ...


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