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SAN MARINO, Calif.\u2014The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens announced today that it has acquired the archive of American author Thomas Pynchon, considered by many to be among the greatest novelists of our time. Comprising 70 linear feet of materials created between the late 1950s and the 2020s\u2014including typescripts and drafts of each of his novels, handwritten notes, correspondence, and research\u2014Pynchon\u2019s literary archive offers an unprecedented look into the working methods of one of America\u2019s most important writers.<\/p>\n
The author of eight novels thus far and one short story collection, Pynchon, whose work has been translated into more than 30 languages, has influenced generations of diverse and important writers. \u201cBringing a writer of Pynchon\u2019s caliber to The Huntington is an expression of our long-standing investment in American
\nhistory and culture, while underscoring our commitment to 20th-century and contemporary literature,\u201d said Karen R. Lawrence, president of The Huntington. Lawrence, a literary scholar whose research focuses on James Joyce, noted that The Huntington\u2019s support of advanced research in the humanities, as well as the depth and breadth of the library\u2019s historical collections, will enable contextual and sustained inquiry into Pynchon\u2019s work. The author\u2019s son, Jackson Pynchon, compiled and represented the archive. \u201cWhen The Huntington approached us, we were excited by their aerospace and mathematics archives, and particularly attracted to their extraordinary map collection,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen we learned of the scale and rigor of their independent scholarly programs, which provide exceptional resources for academic research in the humanities, we were confident that the Pynchon archive had found its home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Born on Long Island in 1937, Thomas Pynchon attended Cornell University and served two years in the Navy. While working as a technical writer for Boeing, he wrote his first novel, V., which was published to immediate critical acclaim in 1963 and won the William Faulkner Foundation Award for best debut novel. Pynchon\u2019s follow-up novel, The Crying of Lot 49, became an instant cult classic. Published in 1966, it has since become one of the most frequently adopted American novels in university courses worldwide. In 1974,
\nPynchon received the National Book Award for Gravity\u2019s Rainbow, a touchstone of American postwar literature that Tony Tanner deemed \u201cone of the great historical novels of our time and arguably the most important literary text since Ulysses.\u201d The author received a MacArthur \u201cgenius grant\u201d in 1988, and his most recent novel,
\nBleeding Edge, was short-listed for the National Book Award in 2013. When critic Harold Bloom was asked in 2009 which single work of American fiction he would choose from the last century for his \u201ccanon of the American sublime,\u201d he said, \u201cIt would probably be Mason & Dixon, if it were a full-scale book, or if it were a short novel it would probably be The Crying of Lot 49. Pynchon has the
\nsame relation to fiction, I think, that my friend John Ashbery has to poetry: He is beyond compare.\u201d An author who defies easy classification, Pynchon wrestles with the transcendence and the tragedy of American history, his voice marked by a yearning for the beauty of America\u2019s ideals, a frustration with the depth
\nof the nation\u2019s contradictions, and a cautious optimism in the promise it offers the world. As Anthony Lane wrote in his review of Mason & Dixon, \u201cThe novel is as tolerant and capacious as its creator would like an ideal America to be.\u201d
\nUnlike many American novelists who are associated with only one region, Pynchon has set his novels from coast to coast and beyond. However, \u201cPynchon\u2019s interest in American history has also been one that returns repeatedly to California\u2014from The Crying of Lot 49 to Vineland to Inherent Vice,\u201d said Karla Nielsen, The Huntington\u2019s curator of literary collections. Inherent Vice, his 2009 private-eye novel set in 1970s Los Angeles, was adapted into a film by Paul Thomas Anderson in 2014.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe expect Pynchon\u2019s archive to attract profound attention from those wishing to better understand his work,\u201d noted Sandra Ludig Brooke, Avery Director of the Library at The Huntington. \u201cWe are honored that Pynchon has entrusted his papers to The Huntington and look forward to stewarding them into a long future
\nfor American cultural history.\u201d The Huntington is home to more than 11 million library items and annually provides access to some
\n2,000 scholars, who use the collections in their research projects and many of whom are funded through a robust fellowship program. The Library holds significant manuscripts by the most important writers of the 15th through the early 20th centuries, ranging from Chaucer to Shakespeare, Mary Shelley to Charles Dickens, and
\nEdgar Allan Poe to Jack London. Later 20th-century literary archives include the papers of Kingsley Amis, Christopher Isherwood, Charles Bukowski, and Octavia E. Butler.<\/p>\n
The Pynchon archive is currently being processed and is slated to be opened to qualified researchers within the next year.<\/p>\n
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Huntington Library Gets Pynchon Archive SAN MARINO, Calif.\u2014The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens announced today that it has acquired the archive of American author Thomas Pynchon, considered by many to be among the greatest novelists of our time. … Continue reading