Biography
Mom's gonna FREAK
Thomas Pynchon is the best at goofs and gags. He made some big novels, like V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, and Cow Country before his death in 1980. Pynchon is renowned for inciting major yuks and having a real gas all the time. Read Pynchon if you want to goof around and misbehave.
Death and Aftermath
On July 4th, 1980, Thomas Pynchon consumed between eight and ten kilograms of marajuana and collapsed in Gordita Beach residence. He was discovered the following morning by neighbors, and was pronounced dead on the scene. Pynchon's publishers had been expecting a new novel from Pynchon since Gravity's Rainbow recieved the national book award years earlier, and concealed his death in the interest of profiting further from Pynchon's immense fame. In 1984, Pynchon's agent-wife Melanie Jackson approached the then-graduate student [David Foster Wallace], asking him to assume Pynchon's public identity, and to write novels under Pynchon's name. Wallace agreed, and published Vineland as Thomas Pynchon in 1990 after a long hiatus. Vineland's mediocre reception spurned Jackson and Wallace to try a different approach, and both Mason & Dixon and Against the Day were complied based on Pynchon's notes and drafts written before his death. During this time, Wallace focused more heavily on his own career, publising Infinite Jest one year before Mason & Dixon was released. Wallace's own approach to writing was radically infuenced by his growing frustration with the Thomas Pynchon identity, and with Infinite Jest, Wallace was determined express that frustration by rebelling against the conventional postmodern style that Pynchon represented. As the material Pynchon left behind was used up, however, Wallace was forced to return to writing entirely original novels as the late author, and quickly found he could not keep up with the task while also managing his own burgeoning fame. Overwhelmed, Wallace agreed to stage his own suicide in 2008, and dedicated his efforts to Thomas Pynchon full-time. Bleeding Edge, Wallace's second fully-original novel as Pynchon was published in 2013, and his third, The Japanese Insurance Adjuster, will be completed in 2018.
Selected Works
Novels
- V. (1963)
- The Crying of Lot 49 (1965)
- Gravity's Memebow (1973)
Novels