Thomas Pynchon books

Anthologies

Short Stories/Novellas

Short Story Collections

Standalone Novels

Thomas Pynchon is an American novelist born in 1937 in Glen Cove, Long Island. He graduated high school at sixteen, enrolled at Cornell University to study engineering physics, and began publishing short stories in the late 1950s. His early fiction appeared in literary magazines and drew attention for its unusual density and range of reference. He has been famously private throughout his career, rarely photographed and never giving interviews.

Pynchon’s debut novel V. appeared in 1963 and won the William Faulkner Foundation Award. The Crying of Lot 49 followed in 1966, a shorter and more accessible book about a woman who stumbles onto what may be a centuries-old underground mail system. His third novel, Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), is his most celebrated work and won the National Book Award. The book covers the final months of World War II and its aftermath through an enormous cast of characters, and it is regularly cited as one of the great American novels. Later works include Vineland (1990), Mason & Dixon (1997), Against the Day (2006), Inherent Vice (2009), Bleeding Edge (2013), and Shadow Ticket (2025).

Pynchon’s fiction is known for paranoia as a recurring theme, elaborate plots, dark comedy, and a willingness to mix high and low culture freely. His books reference rocket science, espionage, mathematics, pop music, and slapstick humor in equal measure. He is a MacArthur Fellow and is regularly mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. His influence on American fiction is difficult to overstate, and his work continues to attract new readers decades after publication.