Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mortality and Mercy in Vienna | 1959 | Thomas Pynchon | Buy |
| 2 | The Small Rain | 1959 | Thomas Pynchon | Buy |
| 3 | Low-Lands | 1960 | Thomas Pynchon | Buy |
| 4 | The Secret Integration | 1964 | Thomas Pynchon | Buy |
| 5 | Entropy | 1983 | Thomas Pynchon | Buy |
Thomas Pynchon’s short stories represent his earliest published fiction, written while he was still at Cornell University and shortly after. These five stories appeared between 1959 and 1983, though most were written in the late 1950s and early 1960s before Pynchon turned his attention to novels.
Mortality and Mercy in Vienna (1959) and The Small Rain (1959) were his first published works. Low-Lands (1960) and The Secret Integration (1964) followed, all showing a young writer already experimenting with the themes of paranoia, entropy, and social fragmentation that would define his novels. Entropy (1983), though published later as a standalone, was actually written earlier and is one of his most frequently anthologized pieces, built around the second law of thermodynamics as both a scientific concept and a metaphor for social decay.
Most of these stories are collected in Slow Learner (1984), which includes an unusually candid introduction by Pynchon about his early writing. For readers approaching Pynchon’s work, these shorter pieces offer a manageable entry point before tackling the density of V. or Gravity’s Rainbow.