Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. (born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist noted for his complex, labyrinthine, and critically acclaimed works, including V., Gravity's Rainbow, and The Crying of Lot 49. In addition to his actual written works, he is also noted for his reclusive nature; few photographs of him have ever been published.

Rumors

• It has been suggested that Pynchon and one Wanda Tinasky are the same person. Several letters authored under the name "Wanda Tinasky" in the late 1980s were published in the Anderson Valley Advertiser in Anderson Valley, California. The style and content of these letters closely resemble Pynchon's, and Pynchon's Vineland, which was written at that time, also takes place in Anderson Valley. Pynchon may have been in the area, conducting research. A collection of these letters has been printed as a paperback book entitled The Letters of Wanda Tinasky; however, Pynchon himself denies having written the letters. One linguist has proved with almost certainty that William Gaddis, not Thomas Pynchon, is responsible for the letters of Wanda Tanasky. In many ways the novel Mason & Dixon, which features a signature from the Tanasky letters, can be seen as an allusion to the lives and preoccupations of Pynchon and Gaddis.
• It has been rumored that Pynchon's next book will be about the life and love stories of Sofia Kovalevskaya, whom he allegedly studied in Germany. The former German minister of culture Michael Naumann has claimed that he assisted Pynchon in his research about "a Russian mathematician that studied for David Hilbert in Göttingen". It has been noted that Kovalevsky's nom de plume "Tanya Raevsky" bears a resemblance to "Wanda Tinasky".
• In an essay entitled "One Writer's Big Innings," novelist Robert Clark Young gives a humorous account of persuading his father, a Department of Motor Vehicles employee, to use the DMV computers in the 1980s to track Pynchon to his home in Aptos, California. The plan was to draw a large muted post horn on Pynchon's front door in order to teach him a lesson for "writing books that make people paranoid."
• Pynchon's reclusive nature led to some suspicions in the 1970s that "Thomas Pynchon" was actually a pen name of J.D. Salinger, another notoriously reclusive author. No evidence was ever presented to support this rumor.