SOURCE: "Pynchon's Groundward Art," in Michigan Quarterly Review, Vol. 30, No. 2, Spring, 1991, pp. 375-82.

In the following review, Tabbi criticizes Pynchon's artistic complacency in Vineland.

As long as the novel remains a popular medium, it is probably inevitable that readers should regard the artist before the work of art, and tend to celebrate the performing, rather than the creative, personality. An abdication as extreme as Thomas Pynchon's only proves the rule. He has given no interviews and made no public appearances, personal friends keep quiet, and there are only a scattering of photographs from the 1953 Oyster Bay High School yearbook that editors, in an act of pure revenge, have kept reprinting in feature articles and national reviews. For someone of Pynchon's stature, the sheer effort of maintaining anonymity has to be an occupation in itself, and reason enough to avoid publication for seventeen years.

Now that Vineland has appeared...