The Negligent Student

Thomas Pynchon — along with Salinger, the “great American recluse,” one of the greatest writers of world literature of the 20th, and now the 21st century, unanimously recognized as a classic on par with Nabokov, Joyce, and Borges after his... first publications. Pynchon's heroes are traditionally obsessed with themes of universal conspiracy and social paranoia, searching for the hidden springs of history. In the collection of early prose by the “unmatchable storyteller of tales that emerge from the dark underground of our imagination” (Guardian), we observe a “genius talent at the start” (New Republic). Moreover, the book contains perhaps the only extensive direct statement by the famous recluse: “No one knew anything about Pynchon as a person — until he revealed himself in the preface to the collection of his early stories” (Sunday Times). The translations are published in a new edition, and the author's preface is presented for the first time in Russian.