The second in our brace of reclusive authors of American fiction is Thomas Pynchon (see preceding blog on JD Salinger). Long Island-born Pynchon came to the full-time vocation of fiction-writing via short stints in the navy and for Boeing as a technical aide. By the time Pynchon writes his first novel, V. in 1963, he is domiciled in México City, and the persona of Pynchon as an “Invisible Man of Letters” has already started to take root.
PYNCHON
If there were slim pickings for inquisitive fans of JD Salinger wanting more biographical information about their reclusive ‘fave’ writer, then comparatively there’s an absolute famine when it comes to the lack of ‘goss’ on Thomas Pynchon! Pynchon has managed to weave an airtight web of mystery around his personal life – no interviews, no attendance of literary prize awards, no memoirs, no hobnobbing with fellow celebrities at ‘A’ list gatherings, no teaching post in academia. In Pynchon’s (loosely) historically-based novel Mason & Dixon one of the characters is castigated for “the least tolerable of Offences … the Crime they styl’d ‘Anonymity’” – the very state of existence that Pynchon craves. The reclusive and ubër-private New Yorker differs from the equally reclusive Salinger in not having had to suffer the ignominy of family ‘betrayal’ as Salinger was subjected to. Pynchon’s family (agent/wife, son, brother and sister) and friends have all closed ranks, drawing down the cone of silence on the subject of the famous recluse＊.
Pynchon belongs to the “why make it simple, when you can make it complicated” school of communication. His books, popularly subsumed under the label ‘postmodern’ are typically characterised by over-elaborate and often open-ended plots, dense and hard to follow, labyrinthine sentences (Mason & Dixon meanders a full 122 words before it reaches its first full stop!) Pynchon offers up a mixed grill of cultural references to sex, drug culture, science and tech stuff, historical information and comic-book fantasy (with a raft of quirky and zany characters), etc. Beginning with The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), the first of Pynchon’s “Californian trilogy” novels, the author turns a critical eye on the counterculture…although Pynchon evinces a consonance with its core values and communitarian ideals he voices a concern that the American counterculture may be an accessory of the dominant culture rather than a genuine reaction to it [‘American Modernity and Counterculture’, (The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon), www.litcharts .org]. In ‘Lot 49’ protagonist Oedipa Maas accidentally stumbles into Trystero, a shadowy world of convoluted conspiracies, unearthing a centuries-old conflict between rival mail distribution companies.
Political Pynchon?
A central motif that comes through in Pynchon’s novels is a distrust bordering on paranoia of government agencies and private corporations. In Gravity’s Rainbow he expresses deep suspicions about the motives of the military/industrial complex. But Pynchon seems also to distrust the established political left in its empirical authoritarian form. Instead, his natural orientation and sympathies seem to be towards the anarchists and the preterites (ie, those controlled by the elite). One scholar notes that anarchists or allusions to them are present in all of the Pynchon books … anarchism, Pynchon seems to suggest, might be the best non-authoritarian and non-hierarchical social configuration for the future [‘Riding the Interface: An Anarchist Reading of Gravity’s Rainbow’, (Graham Benton), www.pynchonnotes.openlibhums.org]. Politics also run through Pynchon’s next, Vineland (1990), a novel which some dismissively dispatched as “Pynchon-Lite”. Vineland is an absurdist fable— punctuated with numerous references to drugs, 1960s music and TV pop culture, especially Star Wars—through which Pynchon provides a commentary on several key issues of the Eighties (the culture war debates, reading, television and mass communications). Set against the backdrop of the Republican Party’s re-election in 1984, Pynchon also takes a hefty swipe at American politics in the age of Reaganomics with a warning to America about “encroaching fascism” [Meinel, Tobias. “A Deculturated Pynchon? Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland” and Reading in the Age of Television.” Amerikastudien / American Studies 58, no. 3 (2013): 451-64. Accessed November 26, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43485900].
❝ Then again, it’s the whole Reagan program, isn’t it—dismantle the New Deal, reverse the effects of World War II, restore fascism at home and around the world, flee into the past, can’t you feel it, all the dangerous childish stupidity—I don’t like the way it came out … someday, with the right man in the White House, there will be a Department of Jesus.❞
~ Thomas Pynchon, Vineland
While resolutely keeping his guard up Pynchon maintains control of his universe by choosing when and what of himself he gives up to the world at large. Famously Pynchon has appeared (in animated form) on two episodes of The Simpsons, having dictated the terms of his guest spot (clear sign that the couch-surfing literary hermit is up on mainstream pop culture※). Obviously the idea of the Simpsons gig tickled his humerus wildly, as he is shown(sic) wearing a paper bag on his head and gets to say that he loves Marge Simpson’s book “almost as much as he loves cameras”.
The “no selfies” author
Tom Pynchon has been incredibly successful over many decades, especially living in a metropolis of over eight million people, in scrupulously avoiding the lenses of the ubiquitous paparazzi. Until very recently there was virtually no new photos of the reclusive writer floating round⍟. Media outlets when running a story on Pynchon almost invariably fall back on the one or two photos taken during his navy days (when Pynchon was aged around 19/20!). Pynchon’s legendary antipathy to having his photo taken has been explained away as self-consciousness about his protruding buck teeth (something that an early trip to the dentist could surely have helped with). Whether this explanation holds water or not is of course, like everything else, a topic Pynchon is deafeningly silent on. On the issue of Pynchon hermetically sealing himself off from the world, a more plausible speculation is that it may be a reflection of Pynchon’s disapproval of the modern trend of writers embracing, even rejoicing, in the role of being celebrities, eg, Norman Mailer and Truman Capote et al [‘Thomas Pynchon Returns to New York, Where He’s Always Been’, (J.K. Trotter), The Atlantic, 17-Jun-2013, www.theatlantic.com].
A method in the madness?
The lengths Pynchon will go to avoid being photographed have a paranoia-like tinge to them, and some are legendary. Once in México during the Early Sixties V. period, when surprised by a random photographer, Pynchon apparently jumped straight out of his apartment window to escape being snapped [‘Hiding in Plain Sight: On the unobservable Thomas Pynchon’, (Alex Gilvarry), Topic, Issue No. 04, October 2027, www.topic.com]. The failure to pin down the identity of a famous but reclusive novelist contributes to the creation of myths … the enigma of an “invisible literary man” exudes more intrigue. Pynchon would understand that having a mystique about him, another layer of interest for his ‘gonzo’ fan base to engage with, would have a bonus marketable spin-off for the author’s sales [‘Meet Your Neighbor, Thomas Pynchon’, (Nancy Jo Sales), New York, 27-Jun-2008, www.nymag.com].
Pynchon Inc personnel: the ministry of silly names
Pynchon novels are typically peopled by a vast array of characters. In Gravity’s Rainbow, Pychon rolls out no fewer than 400 named characters in 760 pages (most with fleeting walk-on, walk-off parts). Pynchon also revels in preposterous nomenclature, inventing lots of outrageous puns like Joaquin Stick, Benny Profane and the Marquis de Sod (a Californian lawn-care specialist!), and an inexhaustible supply of downright silly names – including McClintic Sphere, Tyrone Slothrop, Rachel Owlglass, Weed Atman, Yashmeen Halfcourt, Mike Fallopian, Scarsdale Vipe, Doc Sportello, Rev. Wicks Cherrycoke and Pig Bodine. Needless to say from the jokey nature of this Pynchon nomen-sampler that fleshing out a character’s depths is not really the New Yorker’s bag [‘Gravity’s Rainbow’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
An orgy of exegesis: Conspiracy la-la land
As someone with a lofty literary profile in the US and beyond (regularly mentioned in the mix of annual Nobel Prize contenders), the utter paucity of biographical information on Pynchon has given rise to some pretty wild speculation about who he really is? Outré theories abound on the internet about the novelist’s identity, one of the most persistent is that Thomas Pynchon is really JD Salinger! Presumably the germ of this notion was the commonalities between the two, both perceived as hermits with a pathological allergy to attention, and each shared a fierce insistence on their personal privacy. But what gave added weight to the imaginative coupling in people’s minds was Salinger’s early removal from the public gaze and the supposed drying up of his literary output as evidenced by the complete cessation of his published work post-1965. This baseless ‘theory’ holds that Salinger invented “Thomas Pynchon” as an “elaborate authorial personality” to hide behind (Trotter). Even more ludicrous was the allegation that Pynchon was in fact the Unabomber! Another speculation has him as an airline pilot in real life (motivated by Howard Hughes adulation perhaps?). Other theories, rather predictably, conclude that Pynchon has to be a drug smuggler or a CIA agent (“its all there in the stories!”) [‘Authors reveal their Thomas Pynchon conspiracy theories’, Bookish, 03-Oct-2013, www.usatoday.com]. And so it goes, with more and even crazier notions. There’s something very apt that so many loopy conspiracy theories circulate about the identity of an author whose fiction is littered with accounts of loopy conspiracy theories✫.
Footnote: Lost in Pynchon
Given my own often bewildered reaction to much of the fiction of Pynchon, and the palpable frustration that I see exhibited by others seeking despairingly to decode Tom Pynchon’s idiosyncratically personal brand of hieroglyphics◪, I often wonder why so many of us punters keep making the self-flagellating effort…I’m reminded of the cynic’s definition of a classic book, “something that everyone wants to have read but nobody wants to read” (Mark Twain, who else?). Echoing this is one critic’s pithy summation of Gravity’s Rainbow, Pynchon’s most praised book, as the “least-read-must-read” book in American history (Sales). For the marginalised multitude denied enlightenment there is some comfort in mockery. The title of Pychon’s 2009 “Po-Mo” take on the ‘gumshoe’ novel, Inherent Vice⍉, offers a pyrrhic get-square (Incoherent Vice) [‘Incoherent Vice’, (Sam Anderson), New York, 31-Jul-2009, www.nymag.com].
PostScript: Absurdist and a Fabulist?
Pynchon is a black belt when it comes to telling the “shaggy-dog” story. Early critics described his novels V. and Gravity’s Rainbow as “high-caliber shaggy dog stories, full of digressions and possibly pointless details converging to a climax that revolves little” [‘Thomas Pynchon: A Primer’, (Jack Joslin), 25-Apr-2012, www.litreactor.com]. This description also applies to the later Mason & Dixon, a long rambling tale full of rollicking in taverns and absurdly inconsequential humour. Pynchon concocts a mixture of fact and fiction, the actual historical personages of Mason and Dixon blended into the “obvious lies, rumours and outright fantasies of their travels” while surveying the boundaries of colonial North America [Thomas Pynchon: Novels & Concept.” Study.com, 25 June 2013, study.com/academy/lesson/thomas-pynchon-novels-lesson-quiz.html]. This shaggy dog, picturesque style of Pynchon brings to mind Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy but also reminds me of Peter Carey (especially Illywhacker) and John Barth who write in a Fabulist/Magic Realism vein.
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＊ the scarcity of biographical material on Pynchon doesn’t stop the “Pynchon-curious” from trawling through the texts to turn up whatever “auto-fiction” they can find…the protagonist of V., Benny Profane, “a schlemihi and human yo-yo” is ex-navy, just like his creator.
※ Pynchon, and for that matter, JD Salinger in his time, would undoubtedly have no trouble writing a treatise on daytime television had either wished to do so
⍟ even the photos supposed taken of the septuagenarian/octogenarian Pynchon out shopping can’t be confirmed as being genuinely of him
✫ Pynchon once famously said “every weirdo in the world is on my wavelength”
◪ one reviewer likened Pynchon’s cryptic first novel V. to a Hieronymus Bosch triptych
⍉ thus far the only Thomas Pynchon novel to make it to the silver screen