Thomas Pynchon

not! long! enough!

(it took me ten years to finish)

did we know that his full name is "Thomas Ruggles Pynchon"

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr.

👍

Surprised to see the low rating for Slow Learner - I think The Secret Integration is one of the loveliest things he ever wrote.

Shamefully as a dedicated TRP fanboi I am still not even halfway through Against the Day ;_;

I had seen his full name before because I have read his wikipedia page many times, but I don't think I ever followed the link to his ancestor William Pynchon, and saw the Pynchon coat of arms
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/COA_William_Pynchon.svg/800px-COA_William_Pynchon.svg.png

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EoGaSWzWMAYFCK0.jpg

This would be a fun Nobel Prize surprise.

also, it is so so so West Coast, I love that about it

― sleeve

Maximalism’s Big Daddy. His novels, in which entropy reigns supreme, are dense and complex and uncover the murky and incongruous mechanics of life, but without providing a single answer. Authors like him only come once in a lifetime. Award the 2022 Nobel Prize to Thomas Pynchon. pic.twitter.com/2BVzmoNJTA

— Luis Panini (@TheLuisPanini) October 3, 2022

Hey take it over to the Great Real Names thread, M. Panini!

A game on this site was trying to find an author who was as wild as Pynchon. I really liked this piece of Laiseca, the novel hasn't been translated but it does sound wild.

https://www.asymptotejournal.com/special-feature/manuel-antonio-castro-cordoba-on-laiseca/

I read Mason & Dixon this year and it was lovely

Yah!

xyzzzz, thanks for that link. The description of Laiseca sounds so much like Pynchon! Very interesting and now I want to read it but don't speak or read spanish :(

Quite a few ambitious works are being translated btw. This is out Match next year.

https://dalkeyarchive.store/products/the-garden-of-seven-twilights

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2022-12-14/the-huntington-library-acquires-papers-of-thomas-pynchon

Huntington Library is an awesome place and perfect for Pynchon. Really interesting that the archive will include his research materials - could be illuminating.

love this. huntington really is the right place.

A few have talked about Solenoid as the highly ambitious work on a Pynchonesque scale. Eng translation has been issued. I will have a go at it.

Mircea Cărtărescu’s “brilliant, clear and disquieting prose….fills you quite immediately with a desire to explore a world that seems to be collapsing”

Read @SaraheKornfeld’s full review of “Solenoid” (tr. Sean Cotter) here:https://t.co/crAUuYGybV@DeepVellum #LARreviews pic.twitter.com/Bg47GMSW7L

— Los Angeles Review (@LAReview) December 14, 2022

Lovely news to see indeed -- Pynchon and Butler, what a combo alone!

The best novel ever written by an ex-CIA operative (unless Pynchon is ex-CIA, which he might be).

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) September 22, 2023

If he was, it surely only served to sharpen his criticism of historical and contemporary US foreign policy

DeLillo has more big spook energy.

Libra presumably an expose rather than a speculation

whenever this thread is revived I worry that he's dead. how old is he by now anyway?

86 I think

there's a signed edition of Mason and Dixon on Ebay for $24k.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/274765041981?hash=item3ff945d13d:g:B7oAAOSwQWBdfQkd&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAA4NQNcS8Q0SfQmzO0180rdkEA3JX4lSWkw5TA7yzzANIQk8pUsHcXQs8FzKvlDWMLPHJePYglAPUC093VvGVN68JYxmebKgweiZ8Nbcw5r5XNmSffetYZxis45gH8G%2FfrPxRsxto3SCtzlSp1kA%2FFtpyf5Q0241JFXIjigK74en2DIdcCmj2hJ0zoRKRw6G%2Fvc7pfVR3LWO0QInO5m7tckigFGMBRoe2cUdDELt0miJWdXDFcNtpPjIsrD5S4PqlPUjKYygYfT%2B1sHP0efqct3wR4Yr3Y5amrbKlkoeg3pOqf%7Ctkp%3ABlBMUOq9tu3XYg

I’ve seen signed Salinger and Pynchon titles go for between $10k and $30k. You can see some more on Abebooks

He's actually been dead since 1974. The books written by "Thomas Pynchon" after that point have actually been written by Irwin Corey.

i've held on to a signed Infinite Jest first edition in the hope that it would hit those heights but alas they seem to go for around 4k; he's dead but he wasn't exactly a recluse. If I don't get a job at some point I'll probably have to let it go.

i found a hilarious reddit thread from a european investigator who followed old men all over new york wondering if they were pynchon. he may or may not have snapped a picture of the back of him going into the building they confirmed as a residence of pynchon's wife. I just like to imagine old guys in NY getting accosted by a swede asking "are you thomas pynchon?" and their bewildered eyes

that's amazing

I vaguely know Elvis Buñuelo and I read *Mating* at his behest. Amazing novel.

xxxpost best novel by an ex-CIA agent: might be those by pen names ov Paul Linebarger, though I haven't yet read any (though omg the shorter fiction)

re: Linebarger, the short fiction is amazing and stands up today. if anything only more prescient on e.g. animal liberation. nonfictionwise, Psychological Warfare is sitting on my desk but I haven't cracked it yet.

best by ex-CIA probably deserves its own thread. Frank Herbert seems obvious but afaict he genuinely was not affiliated.

Don't forget Harry Mathews