Shadowy Presence

By Paul Gray

The weather for the third annual Gravity's Rainbow Marathon, which began last Nov. 9 on the flagstone terrace in front of Princeton University's Firestone Library, kicked off rainy and windy. Somewhere into the 38 straight hours of public reading, performed in sequence by 76 volunteers, of every word of Thomas Pynchon's 760-page (in the original edition) novel, conditions turned clear and colder. Still, through the long day and night and next day, listeners assembled and dispersed, some of them harboring a small hope that this academic homage might attract the attendance of the author himself. (Rumors about a stranger who could have been Pynchon lurking about the fringes of the first marathon, two years earlier, continued to circulate.) The only problem was, if the author had shown up, no one would have been able to recognize him.

Pynchon, 52, is usually described as reclusive, but this term does not quite capture the reality. Howard Hughes was reclusive; so are J.D. Salinger and Greta Garbo. These people achieved fabled recognitions and then decided to barricade themselves against a public that knew where they were and what they looked like. Pynchon, by contrast, somehow had the foresight to hide from the beginning; the only photographs of him in circulation date from his late adolescence. As a result, he resembles, in his freedom, an apparition he includes in Vineland, namely " 'Chuck,' the world's most invisible robot," an android that operates on an erratic airline between Los Angeles and Honolulu. "How invisible," the plane's p.a. system announces, "you might wonder, is 'Chuck'? Well, he's been walking around among you, all through this whole flight! Yes, and now he could be right next to you -- o-or you!"

Is this Pynchon's teasing reference to his own shadowy presence among his / admirers? A lot of readers and scholars would like to ask him this question directly, plus several zillion others. But Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. is not, never has been, available for interviews. What can definitively be known about him has long since been tracked down. He was born May 8, 1937, in Glen Cove, N.Y., into an old, distinguished New England family; one ancestor founded several towns in Massachusetts; another served as the ninth president of Trinity College in Hartford. Pynchon graduated from Oyster Bay High School in 1953, enrolled at Cornell University, took time out to serve in the Navy, returned to college, worked on the literary magazine and received a B.A. in 1959. Classmates who remember Pynchon at all recall a tall, shy young man, occasionally given to bursts of prankishness.

He held one known job, as an adviser in the writing of technical documents for the Boeing Co. in Seattle, before V., his first novel, appeared in 1963 and he disappeared into his own fame. Since then, his anonymity has been guarded by an extremely loyal band of friends, editors and literary representatives. People who know about Pynchon do not talk; those who talk almost certainly do not know. Hearsay has thus run rampant. Word has it that Pynchon has spent major time in California and has endured recurrent dental problems. He is a lifelong bachelor; or, he has been married several times.

Does any of this matter? As far as Pynchon's books are concerned, no. Yet in this celebrity-besotted era, the spectacle of someone avoiding exposure is naturally intriguing. And Pynchon's fiction, with its emphasis on suspected conspiracies and coded significances, makes him seem a dandy candidate for a guru. If he ever went public, he could be buried in acolytes overnight. Which is a fine reason for Pynchon to stay right where he is, in enviable possession of a mystique far bigger than any single, flawed, vulnerable human. P.G.