Pynchon, Thomas (1937– )
US novelist. With great stylistic verve, he created a bizarre, labyrinthine world in his books, the first of which was V (1963), a parodic detective story in pursuit of the endlessly elusive Lady V. It was followed by the shorter comic quest novel, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), before his gargantuan tour-de-force Gravity's Rainbow (1973; National Book Award), which represents a major achievement in 20th-century literature, with its fantastic imagery and esoteric language drawn from mathematics and science.
| Born in Glen Cove, New York, Pynchon graduated from Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, in 1958. |
| After a collection of earlier written short stories Slow Learner (1984), he published his fourth novel, Vineland (1990), a reworking of earlier preoccupations. |
