Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon is an American novelist known for dense, complex postmodern fiction marked by a paranoid tone, absurd humor, and references to history, art, science, and popular culture. He wrote V. (1963), The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), and Gravity's Rainbow (1973), which won the 1974 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Later novels include Mason & Dixon, Against the Day, and Inherent Vice, which was adapted for film in 2014, and his most recent, Shadow Ticket, appeared in 2025. He remains notoriously reclusive, with few published photographs.