Thomas Pynchon

After graduating from Cornell with a degree in English, novelist Thomas Pynchon worked for two years as a technical writer for Boeing in Seattle, compiling safety articles about a surface-to-air missile. His 1964 application to study mathematics at the University of California was denied. His first novel, V, won a Faulkner Foundation Award, while his 1973 novel Gravity’s Rainbow was a National Book Award winner.