Slow Learner: Early Stories

by Thomas Pynchon

Overview

"An exhilarating spectacle of greatness discovering its powers." - New Republic

"Funny and wise enough to charm the gravity from a rainbow...All five of the pieces have unusual narrative vigor and inventiveness." - New York Times

Compiling five short stories originally written between 1959 and 1964, Slow Learner showcases Thomas Pynchon’s writing before the publication of his first novel V. The stories compiled here are “The Small Rain,” “Low-lands,” “Entropy,” “Under the Rose,” and “The Secret Integration,” along with an introduction by Pynchon himself that Time magazine calls his "first public gesture toward autobiography."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101594612
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/13/2012
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	195
Sales rank:	571,951
File size:	312 KB

About the Author

Thomas Pynchon is the author of V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity’s Rainbow, Slow Learner, Vineland, Mason & Dixon, Against the Day, Inherent Vice, and Bleeding Edge. He received the National Book Award for Gravity’s Rainbow in 1974.

Hometown:

New York, New York

Date of Birth:

May 8, 1937

Place of Birth:

Glen Cove, Long Island, New York

Education:

B. A., Cornell University, 1958

Editorial Reviews

Published in 1984, this contains five of the author's early storieswritten between 1958 and 1964along with an introduction.

Library Journal

How extremely good the stories are...how quickly they carry us into their scruffy, variegated, wonderfully imagined world. -- The New York Times Book Review

Michael Wood

Funny and wise enough to charm the gravity from a rainbow...all five of the pieces have unusual narrative vigor and inventiveness. -- The New York Times

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

The authentic work of a major novelist makes better reading than the mature productions of a dozen minor ones....Readers who discovered Pynchon's stories in little magazines in the late 1950s would have seen in them a bright young talent. Readers who discover them now will find an exhilerating spectacle of greatness discovering its power.

Edward Mendelson

"The apprentice work of a major novelist makes better reading than the mature productions of a dozen minor ones...Readers who discover Pynchon's stories now will find an exhilarating spectacle of greatness discovering its powers."


—New Republic

From the Publisher