Postmodernist American Fiction

The website I have chosen is called The List Universe.http://listverse.com/literature/top-10-works-of-postmodern-literature/

The article is a collection of the Top 10 Works of Postmodernism. Although it sounds very basic and the website is simple to navigate, it provides a good starting point to find information of Postmodern literature. It lists the top 10 postmodern literature books providing you with a picture and breif synopsis of the text. The article begins by providing a brief summary of postmodernism and why the authors of these books should be regarded as such influential figures.

Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon, born in 1937 is an American novelist and short story writer. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature and has successfully acclaimed awards including the National Book Award and the MacArthur Fellow. He has a degree in English from Cornell and served for two years in the Navy. Little is known about Pynchon's life as he always attempted to keep himself and his personal life out of the media spotlight.



Among his work to be published is The Crying of Lot 49, in 1966 which won the Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Foundation Award of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, Gravity's Rainbow, awarded the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1975 which is given every five years to a work of fiction. Pynchon declined this award suggesting it be given to another author, stating The Howells Medal is a great honor, and, being gold, probably a good hedge against inflation, too. But I don't want it. Please don't impose on me something I don't want. It makes the Academy look arbitrary and me look rude. . . . I know I should behave with more class, but there appears to be only one way to say no, and that's no. Other literary work included V (his first novel), The Secret Integration, Mortality and Mercy in Vienna and Under the Rose.



Pynchon has a unique and dense style to his complex yet structured writing. Pynchon's style and genre of writing and influence was subject to change over the years. He began with romantic war stories, moving to science fiction and was influenced by Henry James, William Faulkner, and Beat writers of the 1960s; Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg.