Thomas Pynchon is not, despite popular rumour, the Unabomber. He is not a Branch Davidian, he is not a bag-lady called Wanda Tinasky and he claims not to be J. D. Salinger either. He is probably the author of a book of short stories and five novels, and on the 21st of November 2006 he published a sixth: Against the Day. Pynchon once remarked to a friend that “every weirdo in the world is on my wavelength”. It is certainly true that the mythology of this author exists apart from, and sometimes not even in parallel with, his literary reputation.
What we know of Pynchon’s life is limited. He was born in 1937. He studied engineering physics at Cornell University, leaving after two years to go into the navy. He returned to Cornell to study English, and published his first short story, “The Small Rain”, in 1959. After a stint working for Boeing, he began to work as a writer full time. It was Pynchon’s third novel, Gravity’s Rainbow, which catapulted him to the status of Great American Novelist .It was also about this time that Pynchon began to be famed for his reclusiveness. Pynchon has avoided all cameras since his early twenties and aside from a couple of paparazzi shots, there are no public photos of him. Rumours started to spread that Pynchon was the pseudonym of another writer. One theory emerged that his novels were written by J. D. Salinger, a writer whose style bears absolutely no relation to Pynchon’s. Darker rumours spread as well. It was suggested, on no evidence whatsoever, that he was the Unabomber, or involved with the Waco Branch Davidians. More recently, he was linked with a series of letters which appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser under the name of Wanda Tinasky.
Pynchon’s novels are notorious for their Byzantine and often obscure plots. Despite his obvious wide reading, Pynchon’s sources can often be popular music or urban legend; in V. a main character finds himself hunting alligators through the sewers of New York. Although he is deeply concerned with subjects such as racism, politics and human relationships, he returns throughout his career to themes of conspiracy and concealment, from the secret postal services in The Crying of Lot 49 to the Ninja training camps in Vineland. In Gravity’s Rainbow we are given Proverbs for Paranoids:

1. You may never get to touch the Master, but you can tickle his creatures.

2. The innocence of the creatures is in inverse proportion to the immorality of the Master.

3. If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.

4. You hide, they seek.

5. Paranoids are not paranoid because they’re paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, fucking idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations.

The reality of Pynchon’s absence is (probably) unremarkable. He does not live in a fortified ranch in Waco, Texas, or on the coastline of Big Sur. He lives with his wife and agent, Melanie Jackson, and children in New York City. As he is said to have remarked himself, all “reclusive” really means, when applied to a public figure, is that he “doesn’t like to give interviews.” However, the actual facts of his life, which are no doubt as mundane as the facts of anyone else’s, are not necessarily significant. By exercising control over his own visual image he has, at least, to a society which seems to equate visibility with continued existence, reduced his own name, Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr., to a floating signifier. Like Schrödinger’s cat, he lives in the eyes of the media at least, in an unconfirmed state encompassing a multitude of possibilities. He can be simultaneously a terrorist, vagrant, cultist and author. Like the mechanical duck in Mason and Dixon, his significance is not dependant on visibility.
Pynchon’s status as an American archetype has lead to him appearing in some unusual places. Most notably, he has featured twice in The Simpsons. In both appearances his face is covered by a paper bag, and in one he is seen shouting to passing cars “come and have your photo taken with a reclusive author”. These appearances are the only time his voice has been broadcast. In one episode of The O. C. , Paris Hilton makes a cameo appearance to mention her love of Pynchon, commenting “Gravity’s Rainbow is his masterpiece.” Ironically, Arthur Salm commented that Pynchon “simply chooses not to be a public figure, an attitude that resonates on a frequency so out of phase with that of the prevailing culture that if Pynchon and Paris Hilton were ever to meet–the circumstances, I admit, are beyond imagining–the resulting matter/antimatter explosion would vaporize everything from here to Tau Ceti IV.”
Like Tyrone Slothrop in Gravity’s Rainbow, Pynchon appears to fade into his own myth. Slothrop was last seen on an obscure album-cover. Pynchon surfaces in unexpected book reviews, fragmentary quotes and most recently, in an animated television show, veiled but audible. Tyrone remained visible but silent. Pynchon, on the other hand, seems determined to reduce himself to an unseen voice.