Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 May 2019
Thomas Pynchon has so carefully guarded his privacy that relatively little is known for certain about his personal life. He evidently prefers to have readers focus on his fiction rather than on himself. His principled determination to avoid personal publicity has led to his routinely, but inaccurately, being described as a recluse, has sparked some bizarre rumors – that he was J. D. Salinger, or the Unabomber – and has provoked some spiteful and self-serving revelations. After defying the norms of celebrity culture for decades, Pynchon does seem to have let down his guard a bit: In 2004 he mocked his own reputation as a “reclusive author” by voicing a caricature of himself with a brown paper bag over his head in two episodes of The Simpsons, and in 2009 he narrated a promotional video for his novel Inherent Vice.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.