The Literature Book

296

OUR HISTORY IS AN

AGGREGATE OF LAST

MOMENTS

GRAVITY’S RAINBOW (1973), THOMAS PYNCHON

T

he term “encyclopedic

novel” refers to a capacious,

complex work of fiction that

includes swathes of specialized

information on subjects ranging

from science to the arts to history.

It attempts to create, through a

virtuoso effort of imagination, a

fictional world beyond the reach

of linear storytelling. In his novel

Moby-Dick, Herman Melville

combined, among other things,

biblical and Shakespearean

references, facts about whales,

and realistic descriptions of life

on board a ship. In Gravity’s

Rainbow, set at the end of

World War II, Thomas Pynchon

interweaves wartime secret

operations with pop culture,

surrealism, perverse eroticism,

rocket science, and mathematics.

Determinism and disorder

Within a formidably complex plot,

with shifts in time and around 400

characters, the novel is a display

of prodigious erudition. Its themes

include paranoia, determinism,

death, and entropy—a term from

thermodynamics that indicates

a steady decline into disorder.

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The encyclopedic novel

BEFORE

1851 Herman Melville’s

Moby-Dick is the first great

encylopedic American novel.

1963 Thomas Pynchon’s debut

novel V. anticipates Gravity’s

Rainbow in its panoramic and

information-packed scope.

AFTER

1996 Dealing with addiction,

family relationships, tennis,

entertainment, advertising,

Quebecois separatism, and

film theory, the encyclopedic

novel Infinite Jest, by American

writer David Foster Wallace,

has 388 endnotes.

1997 Using baseball—and one

baseball in particular—as its

central conceit, American

author Don DeLillo’s complex

novel Underworld stretches

from the 1950s to the 1990s

and involves both fictional and

historical characters.

Thomas Pynchon

Born in 1937 on Long Island, New

York, Thomas Pynchon counts

among his ancestors the founder

of Springfield, Massachusetts.

Pynchon attended the high

school in Oyster Bay, and went

on to study engineering physics

at Cornell University, but left

before graduating to serve in the

US Navy. He returned to Cornell

to study English. In the early

1960s Pynchon worked as a

technical writer at Boeing in

Seattle; he would later draw

upon his experiences there in

his fiction (especially Gravity’s

Rainbow). He spent some time

in Mexico before moving to

California. After Gravity’s

Rainbow his fiction became

less stylistically challenging

and more humanistic and

political. Pynchon is known for

being protective of his privacy,

and shy of media coverage.

Other key works

1966 The Crying of Lot 49

1984 Slow Learner (stories)

2006 Against the Day

2013 Bleeding Edge

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