Thomas Pynchon - Media Scrutiny of Private Life

Media Scrutiny of Private Life

Relatively little is known about Thomas Pynchon's private life; he has carefully avoided contact with reporters for more than forty years. Only a few photos of him are known to exist, nearly all from his high school and college days, and his whereabouts have often remained undisclosed.

A review of V. in the New York Times Book Review described Pynchon as "a recluse" living in Mexico, thereby introducing the media label with which journalists have characterized him throughout his career (Plimpton 1963: 5). Nonetheless, Pynchon's personal absence from mass media is one of the notable features of his life, and it has generated many rumors and apocryphal anecdotes.

Read more about this topic:  Thomas Pynchon

Famous quotes containing the words private life, media, private and/or life:

    The others “acted” a role; I was the role. She who was Mary Garden died that it might live. That was my genius ... and my sacrifice. It drained off so much of me that by comparison my private life was empty. I could not give myself completely twice.
    Mary Garden (1874–1967)

    Today the discredit of words is very great. Most of the time the media transmit lies. In the face of an intolerable world, words appear to change very little. State power has become congenitally deaf, which is why—but the editorialists forget it—terrorists are reduced to bombs and hijacking.
    John Berger (b. 1926)

    Municipal laws are a supply to the wisdom of each individual; and, at the same time, by restraining the natural liberty of men, make private interest submit to the interest of the public.
    David Hume (1711–1776)

    There is no religion in which everyday life is not considered a prison; there is no philosophy or ideology that does not think that we live in alienation.
    Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)