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Thomas Pynchon

Also known as Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr., Thomas Ruggles Pynchon

American novelist (born 1937)

AI overview

Thomas Pynchon is an American novelist born in 1937 who is known for his reclusive personal life and complex literary works. His novels are significant contributions to American literature, exploring themes across science, history, and human experience in densely layered narratives.

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Film & TV

Long Island, New York, USA

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. (born May 8, 1937) is an American author/writer. Upon graduation from CU., Pynchon had many options including teaching creative writing at Cornell, becoming a disk jockey, or a film critic for Esquire. "Gravity's Rainbow" was published in 1973. The year after it shared the National Book Award for fiction with Isaac Bashevis Singer's "A Crown of Feathers". It was also…

Known for

The Simpsons — Thomas Pynchon (voice)1989

via TMDB

Wikidata facts

Instance of: human
Gender: male
Citizenship: United States
Place of birth: Glen Cove
Occupation: science fiction writer
Employer: Boeing
Languages spoken: English language
Award: William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
Academic degree: Bachelor of Arts
Student of: Vladimir Nabokov
Military branch: United States Navy
Image: Thomas Pynchon, high school yearbook editor, 1953.jpg
Work location: New York City
Residence: Manhattan

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date of birth: 1937-05-08
topic's main category: Category:Thomas Pynchon
Commons category: Thomas Pynchon
Commons Creator page: Thomas Pynchon
start of work period: 1959-00-00
nominated for: Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
archives at: Harry Ransom Center
writing language: English language

Sources (9)

via Wikidata · CC0

Works in European collections

1 object attributed to Thomas Pynchon, held across European museums, libraries & archives · via Europeana

Untitled

~40 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. (/ˈpɪntʃɒn/ PIN-chon, commonly /ˈpɪntʃən/ PIN-chən; born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist. He is known for his dense, complex works of postmodern fiction, which are distinguished by their paranoid tone, absurd humor, and references to history, art, science, and popular culture. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American novelists. Pynchon is notoriously reclusive. Few photographs of him have been published, and rumors about his location and identity have circulated since the 1960s.

Pynchon served two years in the United States Navy and earned an English degree from Cornell University. After publishing several short stories in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he began composing the novels for which he is best known: V. (1963), The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), and Gravity's Rainbow (1973). For the latter, Pynchon won the 1974 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Pynchon followed with the novels Vineland (1990), Mason & Dixon (1997), Against the Day (2006), Inherent Vice (2009), which was adapted for film in 2014, and Bleeding Edge (2013). Pynchon's latest novel, Shadow Ticket, was published in 2025.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Thomas Pynchon” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.