Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr., born in 1937, is an American novelist known for dense, complex works of postmodern fiction marked by a paranoid tone, absurd humor and references to history, art, science and popular culture. He served two years in the United States Navy and earned an English degree from Cornell University, then published several short stories in the late 1950s and early 1960s before turning to the novels for which he is best known: V. in 1963, The Crying of Lot 49 in 1966 and Gravity's Rainbow in 1973, which won the 1974 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Later novels include Vineland, Mason & Dixon, Against the Day, Inherent Vice and Bleeding Edge. Pynchon is notoriously reclusive, and few photographs of him have been published.