Contraluz thomas pynchon biography death

Pynchon is regarded by many readers and critics as one of the finest contemporary authors. Both his fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, styles and themes, including but not limited to the fields of history, science and mathematics. Pynchon is also known for his avoidance of personal publicity: very few photographs of him have ever been published, and rumors about his location and identity have been circulated since the s.

His earliest American ancestor, William Pynchon , emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony with the Winthrop Fleet in , and thereafter a long line of Pynchon descendants found wealth and repute on American soil. Pynchon's family background and aspects of his ancestry have provided source material for his fictions, particularly in the Slothrop family histories related in "The Secret Integration" and Gravity's Rainbow.

After graduating in at the age of 16, he studied engineering physics at Cornell University, but left at the end of his second year to serve in the U. In , Pynchon returned to Cornell to pursue a degree in English. His first published story, "The Small Rain", appeared in the Cornell Writer in May , and narrates an actual experience of a friend who had served in the army; subsequently, however, episodes and characters throughout Pynchon's fiction draw freely upon his own experiences in the navy.

Pynchon also reportedly attended lectures given by Vladimir Nabokov , who then taught literature at Cornell. While Nabokov later said that he had no memory of Pynchon although Nabokov's wife, Vera, who graded her husband's class papers, commented that she remembered his distinctive handwriting; his later handwriting appears unexceptional , other teachers at Cornell, like the novelist James McConkey, recall him as being a gifted and exceptional student.

In , Pynchon and Cornell classmate Kirkpatrick Sale wrote part or all of a science-fiction musical, Minstral Island , which portrayed a dystopian future in which IBM rules the world.

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After leaving Cornell, Pynchon began to work on his first novel. Air Force. Pynchon's experiences at Boeing inspired his depictions of the " Yoyodyne " corporation in V. When it was published in , Pynchon's novel V. After resigning from Boeing, Pynchon spent time in New York and Mexico before moving to California, where he was reportedly based for much of the s and early s, most notably in an apartment in Manhattan Beach, in Southern California.