Thomas Pynchon Unmasked

“Thomas Pynchon has never, ever granted an interview. This titanically talented writer guards his privacy like a flight risk. The National Enquirer recently stalked Pynchon for six months before stealing a photograph of him as he voted at his local polling place, which, to some of us, was like shooting a GI in the act of raising the American flag. Pynchon’s stance is that of every private writer: let the books speak for themselves. The following Q&A takes very literally this reticent author’s plea. Here is the story of Pynchon’s life and work, with a particular focus on California, as told via his nine books. His answers are his own words, taken verbatim, one book at a time, from V. up through Bleeding Edge. A fine writer and his characters may think they’re discussing other things, but it’s my contention that every author’s keyboard is a polygraph. Pynchon—funny, prophetic, menschy, Californian to his fingerprints—writes his autobiography with every line. First the facts: Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. was born on May 8, 1937, in the Long Island, New York, city of Glen Cove. He entered Cornell as an engineering physics major, then turned a page in the course catalog and found a second home in the English Department. After graduation, he worked in Seattle as a technical writer for Boeing and spent time in, among other places, Mexico City and Guanajuato. Somewhere in there, he wrote one of the best American first novels of the past century, 1963’s V., where we begin. …”
Alta
W – Thomas Pynchon
New Yorker – “V.” at L: Pynchon’s First Novel Turns Fifty
How to get into Thomas Pynchon, on the occasion of his birthday