Thomas Pynchon
American · b. 1937
Thomas Pynchon is an American novelist known for dense, labyrinthine works that blend history, science, conspiracy, and dark comedy. His major novels include V. (1963), The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), Gravity's Rainbow (1973), Mason & Dixon (1997), and Against the Day (2006). Gravity's Rainbow won the National Book Award and is routinely cited as one of the most demanding novels in the English language, a high-water mark of literary maximalism and postmodernism. Pynchon is famously reclusive and has avoided all public appearances since the 1960s.
Books
- Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
Episodes
- 55. Moby Dick, part 1: My name is Ishmael and my special interest is whales
- 54. Crashing out of Gravity's Rainbow: A postmortem of our first DNF
- 53. DYEL wrapped: Most beloved and hated books of 2025
- 52. Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow: It's not rocket science
- 42. Everything is Illuminated: Cultural Learnings of Trachimbrod for Make Benefit Glorious Book Club
- 8. Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, part 3: We finally get to the fucking lighthouse
- 4. John Williams' sleeper hit Stoner: Finding perfection in mediocrity
Fleeting mentions
- 57. Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein: Look how they massacred my boy
- 51. Murakami's Norwegian Wood: the sadboi and his manic pixie dream girls
- 49. C.P. Snow's The Two Cultures: the original stemcels vs shape rotators beef
- 38. DeLillo's White Noise: psy-opping ourselves on death and po-mo
- 32. DYEL Christmas party: The most beloved and hated books of 2024
- 29. Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle: Autofiction and autofellation
- 11. Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, part 3: Was David Foster Wallace a hideous man?