Mystery Writer. Paranoia and conspiracy theories abounded during the 1960s, proferring speculations about topics ranging from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to the Vietnam War to whether or not the U.S. Air Force was storing aliens and UFOs in Dayton, Ohio. It was hardly surprising, then, that the works of an author for whom paranoia and conspiracies were major plot devices should appear during the decade--an author made all the more appealing by the fact that apparently no one knew where he was or what he looked like. His name was Thomas Pynchon, and only two published photographs of him are known: one from his high-school yearbook and one from his Navy years. In his efforts to avoid publicity, he became one of the most discussed writers of the 1960s.

A Cult Phenomenon. After studying at Cornell University, Pynchon burst on the literary scene with his first novel, V., in 1963. A long, difficult book, it was not a best-seller, but it did gain Pynchon a cult following and respectful attention from critics. A similar response greeted his next novel, The Crying of...