Pynchon’s articles in Aerospace Safety and BOMARC Service News are not only informative, but fun to read, even given their highly technical content. The abundance of military and technical references in his books indicates how much these experiences informed his writing. Navy and then worked at the aircraft company Boeing as a technical writer. Prior to pursuing his career in literature, Pynchon served in the U.S. It is known that he studied at Cornell, and that Vladimir Nabokov was one of his professors. Notorious for keeping his personal information private, Pynchon can make Salinger look like a publicity hound. Technical Writings for Boeing – Aerospace Safety and BOMARC Service News
The presence of these contributions from young “Tom” to his high school newspaper makes Mead’s work a collectable Pynchon text as well as a bibliography. In addition, it includes the first appearance in book form of Pynchon’s juvenile writings. Although written 27 years ago, it remains the best description of the author’s early works.
Clifford Mead’s Extensive Pynchon BibliographyĪn essential reference for the Pynchon collector is Clifford Mead’s 1989 book, Thomas Pynchon: A Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources. Fortunately for the collector, the existence of variant forms of his novels and of many associated publications can make collecting Pynchon a challenge worthy of that found in reading his books. Indeed, Pynchon has produced just eight novels over the past fifty years. One does not just “crank out” works that offer such challenges and rewards to their readers.
Pynchon’s novels feature dense, convoluted plots, with wide-ranging allusions to history, science, technology, mathematics, and popular culture. His subsequent efforts have not failed that early promise. His first novel was a winner of major national awards and his magnum opus, Gravity’s Rainbow, nearly won a Pulitzer Prize (more on this later). Pynchon’s earliest writings leapt onto the scene to accolades rarely given to a new author, and he was hailed as one of the bright stars of a new literary generation. His name is known to many who have never read a word of serious literature, and “Pynchonesque” seems to have as many interpretations as the identity of the mysterious V. If only measured by his influence on our culture, Thomas Pynchon is an iconic writer.
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