English 2205
Dr. C

 Born on May 8th, 1937
 Long Island, New York
 Graduated from High School at age 16
 Salutatorian
 Highest English grade
 Went to Cornell
 After sophomore year left to serve in the Navy
 Returned to Cornell
 Degree in English

 Wrote 5 short stories in 2 years
 “Entropy”
 Most famous for his novels
 V.
 The Crying Lot of 49
 Gravity’s Rainbow
 Vineland
 Mason & Dixon
 Won William Faulkner Foundation Award for best
first novel of the year
 Won the Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Foundation
Award for “The Crying of Lot 49”
 Another piece by Pynchon was selected for the
Pulitzer Prize in Lit. but never received the award
 Unreadable, turgid, overwritten, and obscene

 Racism, imperialism and religion
 Blurs difference between high and low
class
 Deconstruction
 Defining characteristic of postmodernism
 Song lyrics and musical numbers
 Physics and Navy background

 “the world’s most famous literary recluse”
 Avoided public exposure
 Lives in California
 Against the Day
 November 2006

 Set in Washington, D.C. in February of
1957
 Meatball Mulligan throws a huge party
 Many strange guests
 Random people show up
-Saul
-College girls
-Navy Men
 Chaos ensues and Mulligan fixes things for

 A man named Callisto and a girl named
Aubade live in a hermetically sealed
hothouse
 Callisto is holding a dying bird and ranting
about the laws of thermodynamics
 Aubade checks the temperature frequently
and it is always 37 degrees
 The bird dies
 Aubade breaks the windows

 http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Thomas_Pynchon