PYNCHON, Thomas

I would love to write an entry that portrays Pynchon's spectacular development from precociously sophisticated short stories about scientific concepts, such asEntropy (1960), through the absurdist vision of history portrayed in his first novel V. (1963), which I featured in a 1965 essay onThe American Absurd Novel,to Gravity's Rainbow (1973), which parades many signs of an avant-garde masterpiece. The problem is that, though purportedlya good reader,I have never been able to finish that last...