There are hardly any photos of him and yet he enjoys a cult-like worship. Pynchon writes about the ups and downs of America or erections triggered by German V2 rockets. Now fans can hope to learn more about him.
He is probably the most mysterious author in the world - and undoubtedly a genius. There are hardly any photos of him, information about him is scarce. Even in "The Simpsons" he was portrayed with a paper bag pulled over his head. In spite of this - or perhaps because of this - US novelist Thomas Pynchon has a huge following. This includes many writers. In the year she won the Nobel Prize, the Austrian author Elfriede Jelinek said: "I can't get the Nobel Prize if Pynchon doesn't have it! It's against the laws of nature. I wish I had recorded that."
Many legends surround Pynchon, who is now 85 years old. Journalists have been stalking him for decades to take a snapshot or video with him. Those who made it later withdrew their recordings out of respect or after consultation - CNN decided in the 90s not to show the author clearly. Pynchon is said to have yelled at a paparazzi in the same decade: "Get your f***ing paw off me!"
Now fans can hope to learn something from the life of the reclusive Pynchon - by the author's own will. The Huntington Library, an educational and research facility near Los Angeles, says it has acquired the author's archive of materials from the 1950s to the present, including drafts of all eight of his novels, handwritten notes and correspondence. The Pynchon archive is currently being edited, but will be made accessible to researchers in 2023.
While fans of Pynchon won't be allowed to view the materials themselves - at least initially - it's to be expected that more and more details about the mysterious author's life will emerge. For the literary world, this is a sensation, to put it mildly.
Most fans only know Pynchon through a handful of photos from his youth. Together with his conspicuously protruding incisors - to be seen above in the embedded tweet. He probably kept it in his old age. After a dinner together, star author Salman Rushdie once described Pynchon as follows: "Thomas Pynchon looks exactly like Thomas Pynchon should look like. He's tall, he wears lumberjack shirts and jeans. He has white hair like Albert Einstein and the front teeth of Bugs Bunny ."
Pynchon shaped Rushdie - and many others. He became the central figure of postmodern literature, which deftly blends fiction with true history and reality experiences, usually peppered with a touch (or a ton) of irony - and a critical attitude towards the world.
A few key data are known about Pynchon: He was born in Long Island, New York, in 1937 and studied physics at Cornell University and then English literature. There he attended a seminar by the writer Vladimir Nabokov. In between, he did two years of service with the US Navy - a sailor photo of Pynchon from this time is known. He later worked for a few years as a technical editor at the aviation group Boeing and then closed himself off from the public from the early 1960s.
In 1963 his first novel was published - with the cryptic title "V." It begins on the first few pages with a man watching someone try to "pee in the tank of a '54 Packard Patrician." With similarly illustrious ideas and an eternal search for "V." - who appears several times as a woman - the novel then continues. Pynchon's next novel "The Auction of No. 49" is also a scavenger hunt for clues. The 1973 novel The Ends of the Parable is considered Pynchon's major work. It is set in the final years of World War II, mostly in London. One of the main protagonists is Tyrone Slothrop, who was conditioned using Pavlovian conditioning to get an erection whenever a German V2 missile approaches.
But it is difficult to summarize the content of Pynchon's novels, including the five that follow, in any way. They treat everything and nothing. Perhaps the most accessible is the detective story "Inherent Vice," which was filmed in 2014 with Joaquin Phoenix. In "The Ends of the Parable" one enigmatic description spins after the next, Tyrone Slothrop, who wanders through London with rocket-induced erections, is just one of over 400 characters.
As enigmatic as the novels are, so is the author. Fans will hope to learn more about Pynchon in the years to come by acquiring The Huntington Library. At the same time, they will be glad that while it opens up to the world, it doesn't really take center stage. The press release on the acquisition of the archive is not accompanied by a photo of Pynchon. Nor does he comment himself.
The author's son, already well known to the public and compiling the archive for his father, is quoted as saying: "When 'The Huntington' approached us, we were enthralled by their aerospace and math archives and especially their extraordinary one card collection," explains Jackson Pynchon. "When we learned of the scope and rigor of their independent scholarly programs, which provide exceptional resources for academic research in the humanities, we were confident that the Pynchon Archives had found its home."
That too is no wonder. Math, maps, science - all of these pervade Pynchon's novels. According to the Los Angeles Times, his archive includes 48 boxes of materials. However, it is not known whether they were delivered to the "Huntington Library" by the mysterious postal organization Tristero, which Pynchon once described in one of his novels in a mythical and typically conspiratorial manner.
