Books with author Thomas Pynchon

The New York Times Best Book of the Year, 1997Time Magazine Best Book of the Year 1997Charles Mason (1728-1786) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-1779) were the British surveyors best remembered for running the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland that we know today as the Mason-Dixon Line. Here is their story as re-imagined by Thomas Pynchon, featuring Native Americans and frontier folk, ripped bodices, naval warfare, conspiracies erotic and political, major caffeine abuse. We follow the mismatch'd pair--one rollicking, the other depressive; one Gothic, the other pre-Romantic--from their first journey together to the Cape of Good Hope, to pre-Revolutionary America and back, through the strange yet redemptive turns of fortune in their later lives, on a grand tour of the Enlightenment's dark hemisphere, as they observe and participate in the many opportunities for insanity presented them by the Age of Reason.

This title is describes as part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon. Private eye Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era as free love slips away and paranoia creeps in with the L.A. fog. It's been awhile since Doc Sportello has seen his ex-girlfriend. Suddenly out of nowhere she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer whom she just happens to be in love with. It is easy for her to say. It's the tail end of the psychedelic sixties in L.A., and Doc knows that 'love' is another of those words going around at the moment, like 'trip' or 'groovy', except that this one usually leads to trouble. Despite which he soon finds himself drawn into a bizarre tangle of motives and passions whose cast of characters includes surfers, hustlers, dopers and rockers, a murderous loan shark, a tenor sax player working undercover, an ex-con with a swastika tattoo and a fondness for Ethel Merman, and a mysterious entity known as the Golden Fang, which may only be a tax dodge set up by some dentists. In this lively yarn, Thomas Pynchon, working in an unaccustomed genre, provides a classic illustration of the principle that if you can remember the sixties, you weren't there...or...if you were there, then you...or, wait, is it.

Part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon- private eye Doc Sportello surfaces, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era In this lively yarn, Thomas Pynchon, working in an unaccustomed genre that is at once exciting and accessible, provides a classic illustration of the principle that if you can remember the sixties, you weren't there. It's been a while since Doc Sportello has seen his ex- girlfriend. Suddenly she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer whom she just happens to be in love with. It's the tail end of the psychedelic sixties in L.A., and Doc knows that "love" is another of those words going around at the moment, like "trip" or "groovy," except that this one usually leads to trouble. Undeniably one of the most influential writers at work today, Pynchon has penned another unforgettable book.

'V.'' by Thomas Pynchon. NY: J. B. Lippincott Company: 1963. First edition. First state dustjacket. Classic American novel chronicling the whimsical quest of Benny Profane and Herbert Stencil for the mysterious, elusive V, a woman who surfaces in various guises at crucial moments of late-19th century history. Solid, tight copy of Pynchon's Faulkner Foundation Award-winning first novel.

First edition (1963) of what many consider to be the finest American novel of the 20th century. The wild, macabre tale of two men -- one looking for something he has lost, the other with nothing much to lose -- and "V.," the unknown woman of the title. From the "Noiseless Chatter" blog: "This edition of V. contains different text from all later printings. The reason is that Pynchon changed his mind about a few things after it went to the printer. It's not uncommon for spelling or formatting errors to be corrected in later printings, but in this case they were actually rewritten passages. Oddly, this unique text wasn't discovered until just a few years ago, when Pynchon's novels were being prepared for release as ebooks. Due to the rarity of first edition copies, and the fact that nobody expected anything different there, decades worth of scholarship missed the fact that the V. we were reading wasn't V. as it was originally published." 492 pages. (Note: This book was published before 1973 so it has no ISBN number.)