How To Be A Better Writer: Read Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Pynchon, one of the greatest authors of all time, wrote a largely undecipherable postmodernist piece of historical fiction set at the end of WWII, entitled Gravity’s Rainbow, published in 1973. Gravity’s Rainbow comprises real (and obscure) historical facts, events, and individuals. The novel is over 700 pages of audaciousness. It is crude yet refined, ridiculous yet profound, scientific yet metaphysical, historical yet imaginative. Thomas Pynchon is the author of many novels, all complex and wrought with subtext, including The Crying Lot of 49, V., Vineland, Mason & Dixon, Against the Day, Inherent Vice, Bleeding Edge, and others. His works have influenced some of the greatest and most prolific authors of our time including Don Delillo and David Foster Wallace.
In 1973, The New York Times published a critic by Richard Locke, the piece was titled, One of the Longest, Most Difficult, Most Ambitious Novels in Years. Gravity’s Rainbow contains over 400 characters, yet it isn’t the most mind-bending part of the circuitous novel. To describe what the novel is about leaves my mouth agape. “What is it about, you ask?” I scratch my chin and look to the sky. Good question. The answer is ineffable. Any response will certainly be an injustice to Pynchon’s genius. One cannot fully explain what it’s about. It is best to state what it is — anagogical — not in a religious sense but in a transformative one.
“Kekulé dreams the Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth, the dreaming Serpent which surrounds the World. But the meanness, the cynicism with which this dream is to be used. The Serpent that announces, “The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning,” is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that “productivity” and “earnings” keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of humanity — most of the World, animal, vegetable, and mineral, is laid waste in the process. The System may or may not understand that it’s only buying time. And that time is an artificial resource to begin with, of no value to anyone or anything but the System, which must sooner or later crash to its death, when its addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World can supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life. Living inside the System is like riding across the country in a bus driven by a maniac bent on suicide . . . though he’s amiable enough, keeps cracking jokes back through the loudspeaker . . .”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
As time moves on, this masterpiece of a novel is often forgotten. True, it needs a companion that is almost as fat as the novel itself, but things worth doing take time, patience, and effort. Certainly, an entire university course can be dedicated to this one novel. Gravity’s Rainbow is a gem riddled with endless gems. Each time you open it up, you’ll find something you previously overlooked or connect a dot your brain bypassed on multiple occasions.
Gravity’s Rainbow was selected for a Pulitzer Prize in 1974 by the Pulitzer Prize jury. However, the Pulitzer Advisory Board found the novel’s content offensive, overwritten, obscene, and unreadable. The Advisory Board superseded the jury’s selection and no Pulitzer Prize was given for fiction in 1974.
“I mean what they and their hired psychiatrists call delusional systems. Needless to say, ‘delusions’ are always officially defined. We do not have to worry about questions of real or unreal. They only talk out of expediency. It’s the system that matters. How the data arrange themselves inside it. Some are consistent, others fall apart. ”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
Some speculate the Advisory Board didn’t want to give Mr. Pynchon the Pulitzer because they knew he wouldn’t show up. Pynchon is extremely reclusive and shuns the spotlight. Very few pictures of him exist and of those that do are of his school days. Almost nothing is known about his private life or his writing habits.
In 2022, he sold his archive to The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. The Pynchon archive comprises 70 linear feet of materials that he created between the late 1950s and the 2020s; it includes typescripts and drafts of each of his novels, handwritten notes, correspondence, and research. Unfortunately, it isn’t on display to the public. It is only available for scholars to study — who will, hopefully (and accurately), disseminate it in their classrooms.
Many great authors were influenced by his genius including Salman Rushdie, David Foster Wallace, Don Delillo, and William T. Vollman. In this way, his legacy continues.
If you want to become a better writer, read Thomas Pynchon’s work. The Crying Lot of 49 is Pynchon’s shortest novel and is often considered a great stepping stone into his work. If you haven’t read his oeuvre, please do. Your writing, and your soul, will be better for it.
Thomas Pynchon Resources:
Purchase Gravity’s Rainbow on Amazon
A Gravity’s Rainbow Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon’s Novel by Steven Weisenberger
Pynchon Wiki (a great free companion to his novels)
Subreddit: r/thomaspynchon (They periodically have Pynchon reading groups.)
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About the Author
TN Estavillo is a Developmental Editor and Story Guide for indie authors. She is a writer and editor at The Anagogē. Her favorite authors are Marcel Proust, Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Pynchon, and Alexander Theroux. She writes literary fiction under a nom de plume. TN lives in Northern California.
