For one, he’s one of the greatest living American authors.
“I don’t think it’s good for your head – if you spend a lot of time writing about a book, you probably shouldn’t be talking about it, you should be doing it.” Cormac McCarthy would know. He'd simply grew annoyed of the limelight, which was at odds with his private life where he was believed to have been quite the man-about-town in his pomp. You’d have to have a heart of stone to begrudge the man any sort of self-inflicted solace due to this mental trauma - except this wasn’t why he withdrew so dramatically from the public eye in 1965 - requesting all future editions cancelled, removing his photograph from the sleeve and allegedly waving a shotgun at anyone who stepped onto his property. Salinger struck it big with The Catcher In The Rye, the author served as a counter intelligence officer in World War Two, writing much of his seminal book during the conflict - the same conflict which would eventually see him hospitalised for combat stress reaction (“You never really quite get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose entirely, no matter how long you live,” he was later said to have told his daughter). Oh, and he’s also voiced himself on two 2004 episodes of The Simpsons, wearing a paper bag on his head for both appearances, naturally. The fact that very few photographs remain have only served to add to his legend. From there, he went on to publish extraordinarily complex and universally commended works such as V and Gravity’s Rainbow, shunning all interviews and seemingly disappearing into the ether, popping up only to release the odd new book and fuel futher outlandish theories - one being that J.D Salinger used Pynchon as a pseudonym. After studying at Cornell University in the early fifties, young Thomas Pynchon left to join in the Navy, soon returning to class where he was taught by the great Vladimir Nabokov. Abrams, commissioned by ABC and set on a far-flung island.
_ Thomas PynchonĪ life so mysterious it might as well have been devised by J. So with the upcoming tell-all memoir The Mockingbird Next Door currently generating headlines because of its subject Harper Lee, we’ve gone and listed the most reclusive literary talents of the last few centuries. Introvert? Extrovert? In truth, social skills don’t so much matter when you’re one of the foremost literary talents of your generation, deftly able to one-up society with the merest flick of a quill or touch of a typewriter key.Īnd yet it can’t be sheer coincidence that many of the most accomplished authors in the world have been enigmatic to the point of vanishing into thin air, their aura only benefiting from this furtive nature which, in some cases, bordered as much on anger to fame as anxiety.