Six short stories by Pynchon were published in various magazines between 1959 and 1964. Five of his stories were republished in the 1984 collection Slow Learner.
This section includes excerpts published prior to the excerpted work. It does not include excerpts reprinted after the publication of the excerpted work.
Pynchon's juvenilia includes several short stories published in his high school student publication Purple and Gold, of which he was also an editor. As an undergraduate at Cornell University, he also co-wrote an unfinished, unpublished libretto for a dystopian musical with fellow student Kirkpatrick Sale.
Unpublished, unfinished manuscript co-written with Kirkpatrick Sale. Minstrel Island is a draft of the libretto for a dystopian sci-fi musical. The plot—in which technology corporation IBM has taken over the world and seeks to eradicate the last refuge of artists on "Minstrel Island"—evinces thematic concerns and subject matter that became hallmarks of Pynchon's literary works. Although the first act is reasonably complete, acts two and three exist only as notes, and there is significant hand-written marginalia throughout. The manuscript is held by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
Autobiographical Sketch/Proposal to the Ford Foundation
Proposal
Proposal for Ford Foundation Fellowship
Unpublished
Part of an unsuccessful proposal for a Ford Foundation fellowship, likely written in June or July 1959. In 1989 a Foundation archivist made this document available to several researchers, including Steven Weisenburger, who describes (but does not quote from) it. Late in 1989, at Pynchon's request, the Ford Foundation closed the author's file for the next 50 years, making this manuscript generally unavailable until 2039.
Written during Pynchon's employment at Boeing. The byline gives his name as "Thomas H. [sic] Pynchon", which is considered an error.[30] Pynchon's middle name is "Ruggles".[31]
An introduction to the collection of Pynchon's own early, previously published short stories.[8] In the 20-page preface, Pynchon reflects on the development of his writing, with autobiographical details that have made it a rare source of information about his life.[38] Though almost universally accepted as a work of nonfiction, the introduction has also been scrutinized as if it were a short story or a genre-ambiguous piece that may include elements of fiction.[39]
Essay on sloth in America. First entry in a summer-long series about the seven deadly sins by Pynchon, Mary Gordon, John Updike, William Trevor, Gore Vidal, Richard Howard and A. S. Byatt. These, along with an eighth essay by Joyce Carol Oates, became the book Deadly Sins (ISBN9780688136901).
Essay introducing the music of American bandleaderSpike Jones (1911–1965), known for his satirical swing compositions and complex novelty arrangements.
Introduction to the first UK paperback edition of the 1990 novel by American author Jim Dodge (1945–). Pynchon had written a blurb for the dust jacket of the novel's hardcover first edition.[46] The following year, a US paperback edition with Pynchon's introduction was published by Grove Press (New York).[47]
Written when Pynchon's son, Jackson, was a second-grade student at the Cathedral School. The essay describes activities at the school during the fall of 1998, including a guided tour of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.[49]
Introduction to a new edition of the 1949 novel by English author George Orwell (1903–1950) marking the centenary of Orwell's birth. The edition also includes a 1961 afterword by German-American writer Erich Fromm (1900–1980).
Between February 22, 1960 and to September 13, 1962, Pynchon was employed as a technical writer for the corporation Boeing, a major aerospace manufacturer and defense contractor.[51] During that time, only one technical article with Pynchon's byline appeared in print: the feature "Togetherness" in Aerospace Safety, a periodical published by the US Air Force rather than Boeing. While "Togetherness" is the only technical article that can be attributed to Pynchon with absolute certainty, it is considered extremely unlikely that he would have produced only one article during more than two years on the job.[52] As such, scholars have conducted research to identify articles that can plausibly be attributed to Pynchon.
Pynchon is known to have worked primarily as a staff writer for Boeing's Bomarc Service News, an in-house periodical related to development of the CIM-10 Bomarcsurface-to-air missile.[note 6] It remains possible, albeit uncertain and unlikely, that Pynchon contributed to other publications as part of his work at Boeing.[note 7] Definitive attribution of any Bomarc Service News articles to Pynchon is impossible because the publication never used bylines. Nonetheless, at least two scholars have used textual analysis in an attempt to identify likely Pynchon pieces:
In a 2000 article for Pynchon Notes, Adrian Wisnicki compiled a list of 24 "probable" and 10 "possible" examples of Pynchon's writing in Bomarc Service News based on stylistic and thematic similarities to known works.[58]
In a 2019 article in the journal Textual Practice, Katie Muth used a stylometry-based authorship algorithm to identify eight Bomarc Service articles that were "closely correlated" with Pynchon's contemporaneous writing, as well as four that she determined were not correlated.[59] Muth later claimed that, from the "handful" of Bomarc articles that could be reasonably attributed to Pynchon, two were "particularly" likely matches: "Torquing" (June 1960) and "The Mad Hatter and the Mercury Wetted Relays" (February 1962).[60]
The following are Bomarc Service News articles assessed as potential Pynchon articles by Wisnicki, Muth, or both.
Articles Pynchon may have written for Bomarc Service News
Date
Title
Probability of Pynchon's authorship, according to...
Unpublished, except for brief excerpts quoted in an article from The New York Times.[73]
—
Donadio was Pynchon's literary agent from 1963–1982. In 1984, she sold a collection of Pynchon's correspondence to her: 120 letters dated between March 4, 1963 and January 5, 1982. The buyer was Carter Burden, a collector of rare American literature. After Burden's death, his family arranged in 1998 to donate his literary collection to the Pierpont Morgan Library in Manhattan. The library initially intended to make the letters available to scholars by the end of the year. It also provided access to The New York Times, which published excerpts from some of the letters.[74] However, following expressions of disapproval from Pynchon's agent and his attorney, the library and Burden family walked back their plan to provide scholarly access. Instead, the library announced that the letters will remain private during Pynchon's lifetime.[75]
Several paragraphs from the letter—totaling 228 words—were quoted in "The Dark Triumvirate", an article in Cavalier magazine by Siegel (1935–2012) about the "black humor" of Pynchon, Bruce Jay Friedman, and Joseph Heller.[76] Siegel indicated that the letter had been addressed to "a suicidal writer friend" but did not refer to its recipient by name.[77] Others have surmised that it had been addressed to Siegel himself.[38] Pynchon recommended the article to a friend, the folk etymologistPeter Tamony, indicating that he did not object to Siegel's extensive quotation from a private letter.[78] In 1984, Steven Moore reprinted the quoted portion of the letter in the Fall 1984 issue of Pynchon Notes.[79]
Response to an accusation of plagiarism directed at Pynchon by the French author Romain Gary, who asserted that Pynchon had stolen "Genghis Cohen"—the name of a character in The Crying of Lot 49—from the titular character of Gary's 1967 novel The Dance of Genghis Cohn (La danse de Gengis Cohn). Pynchon denied the allegation, said he had never heard of Gary or his works, and claimed that their independent invention of a "trivial" pun on the name Genghis Khan was purely coincidental.[80]
Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, 2nd series, Vol. 26, pp. 43–46: "Presentation to Thomas Pynchon of the Howells Medal for Fiction of the Academy by William Styron"
The letter declined the William Dean Howells Medal for Fiction, which Pynchon had been awarded by the American Academy of Arts and Letterss for Gravity's Rainbow. At the time, Wilbur was president of the Academy.[82]
The SoHo Weekly NewsVol. 4, No. 30 (quoted in "The Ghost of Richard Fariña" by Batchelor)
Michael Goldstein
In an article published by the SoHo Weekly News on April 24, 1976, Batchelor alleged that there was no such person as Thomas Pynchon. Instead, Batchelor posited, the name was merely a pseudonym of J. D. Salinger, who had withdrawn from public life and stopped publishing fiction just before Pynchon's career began.[84] In a letter written on MGM stationery, Pynchon replied: "Not bad. Keep trying."[85] Batchelor quoted the letter in a follow-up piece, in which he conceded Pynchon's existence as a real person but maintained that Salinger had written most of Pynchon's works, while suggesting that others may have also contributed to the Pynchon oeuvre, including Donald Barthelme or even Pynchon himself.[86] Later, Batchelor accepted Pynchon's sole authorship of his works.[87]
Hirsch, a graduate student, wrote to Pynchon about material in chapter 9 of V. related to historical South West Africa.[89] Pynchon replied to Hirsch in a letter dated January 8, 1969, which was published in 1988 as an appendix to The Fictional Labyrinths of Thomas Pynchon.[90]
"Words for Salman Rushdie" is a collection of open letters by "28 distinguished writers born in 21 countries" offering support to the British Indian author Salman Rushdie during the controversy against Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses (1988). The New York Times Book Review published the letters less than a month after Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the deaths of Rushdie and his publishers.[92] At 68 words, Pynchon's letter for Rushdie was one of his briefest published works.[93]
Corlies Smith (1929–2004) was the editor of Pynchon's first two novels at Lippincott.[94] In 1990, seven of Pynchon's letters to Smith—dated between August 31, 1961, and June 2, 1962—were published without permission in the book Of a Fond Ghoul.[95] These letters concern the editing process readying V. for publication.[96] The original copies were stolen from the offices of Harper & Row.[97]
Dan Franklin, then-director of the London publishing firm Jonathan Cape, solicited letters of support for English author Ian McEwan from prominent authors of historical fiction. McEwan had been accused of plagiarizing historical texts in his 2001 novel Atonement. Pynchon's letter was quoted in "The borrowers: 'why McEwan is no plagiarist'", an article by Nigel Reynolds in The Daily Telegraph.[99] Other authors who made statements in McEwan's defense included Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, Thomas Keneally, Zadie Smith, and John Updike.[100]
The following are written works for which there has been some claim or question of Pynchon's authorship. These were either works attributed to Pynchon upon publication—albeit dubiously—or works that attracted claims of being written by Pynchon under a pseudonym. None of these are generally accepted as authentic Pynchon writings, and in some cases the possibility of his authorship has been ruled out.
In 1990, Bruce Anderson, the editor of the Anderson Valley Advertiser, claimed that Thomas Pynchon authored letters sent to the Mendocino Commentary and AVA between 1983 and 1988 under the name Wanda Tinasky. In 1994 this was followed by Fred Gardner research and then, in 1996, by a book by TR Factor entitled The Letters of Wanda Tinasky, supporting the claim of Pynchon authorship. The Pynchon connection was denied by Pynchon's agent, Melanie Jackson. In 1998 Don Foster named an obscure Beat poet and writer, Tom Hawkins, as the author of the letters. This led to further research by Factor proving that Hawkins had authored the Tinasky letters.
1990
Barefoot in the Head liner notes
Pynchon's name was signed to the liner notes of Barefoot in the Head, a 1990 studio album by noise musicians Jim Sauter, Don Dietrich, and Thurston Moore. Pynchon's agent denied his authorship.[102] The misattribution was a prank.[103] The true author is unknown. Tim Ware, a musician and Pynchon enthusiast, suggested that the notes had mostly likely been written by Byron Coley, a music critic affiliated with Moore's band Sonic Youth.[102]
In January 2002,[note 8]Playboy Japan published a purported interview with Pynchon conducted by Japanese journalist Motokazu Ohno. If authentic, it represents Pynchon's first and only sustained interview with the press, breaking four decades of media silence. In the interview, Pynchon expressed doubt about the existence of Osama bin Laden (more specifically, Pynchon said bin Laden was "someone's clown for a rodeo" and should be understood "as a symbol rather than a man"), criticized American media coverage of the September 11 attacks, and sarcastically recommended investing in the tobacco industry due to the national mood of heightened anxiety.[106]
Pynchon's agent "disavowed" the interview.[34] Its authenticity is generally regarded as dubious.[107] Literary scholar Paolo Simonetti labeled the interview "unreliable" and "probably fake", noting that although the questioning of bin Laden's existence was "typically Pynchonian" in style and substance, it remained "unlikely that the author would have expressed it plainly in an interview."[108] Pynchon later incorporated the topic of 9/11 conspiracy theories into the plot of his 2013 novel Bleeding Edge.[109]
Rumors that Pynchon had secretly written the 2015 novel Cow Country—published by a small press under the pseudonym Adrian Jones Pearson—led to a significant increase in the book's sales.[110] Art Winslow, a critic and former editor at The Nation, pitched the theory of Pynchon's authorship five months after the novel's release in Harper's Magazine.[111] It was denied by Pynchon's agent and his publisher, Penguin Books. Steven Moore, a critic who had blurbed Cow Country after becoming acquainted with its real author, also denied Pynchon's involvement. Several Pynchon scholars criticized Winslow's analysis as implausible.[112] According to an investigation by journalist Alex Shephard, the true author of Cow Country is probably a writer named A. J. Perry.[110]
Notes
^In the introduction to Slow Learner, Pynchon set the title as "The Crying of Lot 49"—within double quotation marks, rather than italics—and described it as a "story" that had been "marketed as a 'novel'".[3]
^Vineland became available in bookstores in December1989, six weeks before its official publication date of February1990.[10][11]
^A modified adaptation of "Under the Rose" became the third chapter of V. Critics have variously treated "Under the Rose" as a "pre- or meta-text" to V., or as a distinct work with an intertextual relationship to the novel.[19]
^According to some sources, Nobody's Cool was released in 1995.[43] While the copyright registration for the album was dated 1995, it was not actually released until March 1996.[44]
^Pynchon's connection to Bomarc Service News became known through the notice taken by other Boeing employees of his later fame as an author. When Pynchon won the William Faulkner Foundation Award for V., Kenneth Calkins—editor of the internal newsletter Boeing News—noted Pynchon had written for Bomarc Service News.[53] E. A. Hixson, a former editor of Bomarc Service News, later confirmed that Pynchon had been on the publication's staff during his editorship.[54]
^Two other in-house Boeing publications have been ruled out. A co-worker who personally knew the author recalled, years after the fact, that Pynchon had contributed to "the Minuteman Field Service News".[55] However, the company's support publication for the LGM-30 Minuteman—actually called the Minuteman Service News—launched two months after Pynchon is believed to have departed Boeing.[56] It is almost certain Pynchon did not contribute to The Boeing Magazine, as that publication included bylines on every article and never ran his name.[57]
^ abCitations to the Playboy Japan interview sometimes indicate the December 2001 "Special Issue ** Battle on Terror", or inconsistently dated either December 2001 or January 2002.[104] According to the cumulative bibliography maintained by the journal Pynchon Notes, the correct date of the Playboy Japan interview is January 2002.[105]
^Anon. (February 15, 1973). "Briefs on the Arts". The New York Times. p. 53 – via TimesMachine. Viking Press plans to bring out Thomas Pynchon's new 760‐page novel, "Gravity's Rainbow," on March 14 simultaneously in hard‐cover and soft‐cover editions priced at $15 and $4.95, respectively.
^Anon. (April 7, 1984). "New Arrivals". The Indianapolis News. p. 34 – via Newspapers.com. Besides those reviewed in The News, the following books scheduled for publication this week have been received:... 'Slow Learner' (Little, Brown), by Thomas Pynchon.
^Cowart 2012, p. 92: "Vineland... bears the publication date 1990 but appeared in bookstores at the end of 1989..."
^ abPollack Coughlin, Ruth (October 29, 1989). "Thomas Pynchon pens first novel in 17 years". The Standard Star. p. F4 – via Newspapers.com. ...'Vineland,' Thomas Pynchon's first novel in 17 years, will be published by Little, Brown in February, with books being shipped into the stores this December. ('Vineland' will have more than six weeks on bookshelves before the novel's official publication date – the point at which reviewers are free to pounce on it.)
^Zane, J. Peder (March 16, 1997). "Paranoids return! But Exhibitionists seize the day". The News and Observer. p. 4G – via Newspapers.com. Pynchon followed Salinger's sally by quashing his publisher's plan to follow standard procedure and send bound galleys of his new book, 'Mason & Dixon,' to reviewers before the April30 release date.
^Italie, Hillel (November 12, 2006). "Their own private Pynchon". Press of Atlantic City. p. B3 – via Newspapers.com. Pynchon readers await the novelist's next work, 'Against the Day,' due out Nov. 21.
^McHoul & Wills 1990, pp. 133–135; Krafft 2019, p. 9 ("Many reviewers celebrated this introduction for being surprisingly forthcoming, but other readers see it as a carefully guarded performance, almost as if it were another short story"); Kolbuszewska 2019, pp. 281, 286 (fn. 1, citing McHoul & Wills 1990).
^Pynchon 1996, p. 86 ("releasing ...their second CD, Nobody's Cool, in March '96"); Dalsgaard 2019, p. 362 (noting the 1995 copyright but 1996 release).
^Herman & Krafft 2006, p. 261 (fn. 1) (noting that Of a Fond Ghoul was "unauthorized"); Dalsgaard 2019, pp. 362–363 (providing the number and dates of the letters in Of a Fond Ghoul).
^See, e.g., Simonetti 2011, pp. 37 (fn. 1), 40 (using both dates within the same article); compare Krafft 2019 and Muth 2019b (using inconsistent dates in different chapters of the same book).
Simonetti, Paolo (Summer 2011). "Historical Fiction After 9/11: Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day". Modern Language Studies. 41 (1). Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania: Northeast Modern Language Association: 26–41. JSTOR41445148.