Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon is an American novelist, born on 8 May 1937 in Glen Cove, New York. He is one of the most admired and most elusive figures in postwar fiction, and he has long avoided publicity, so very little about his private life is widely documented. His novels are dense, funny and inventive, mixing history, science, conspiracy, pop songs, slapstick and sorrow. Recurring subjects include paranoia, hidden systems of power, technology, and the search for meaning in a confusing world. He first drew attention in the early 1960s and went on to write long, ambitious books such as Gravity's Rainbow, which is often counted among the major American novels of its era, as well as shorter and more accessible works set in California. Readers value him for his wit, his range of knowledge and the strange tenderness beneath the jokes.