---
layout: post
status: publish
published: true
title: Is this a picture of Thomas Pynchon aged 51?

wordpress_id: 2122
wordpress_url: https://www.martineve.com/?p=2122
date: !binary |-
  MjAxMi0wNi0wOCAwOTo1NjozMCArMDIwMA==
date_gmt: !binary |-
  MjAxMi0wNi0wOCAwOTo1NjozMCArMDIwMA==
categories:
- Literature
- Thomas Pynchon
- Academia
tags:
- Pynchon
- biography
comments: []
---
<p>Probably not. But...</p>
<p>I was proofreading some articles for Orbit this morning (which, by the way, will come out now as soon as I have DOI number permissions), when, during fact checking, I came across the following:</p>
<p><a href="https://www.martineve.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Thomas-Pynchon.png"><img src="https://www.martineve.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Thomas-Pynchon-1024x432.png" alt="Thomas Pynchon 1988" title="Thomas Pynchon 1988" style="width:750px;" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-2123" /></a></p>
<p>The picture is a <a href="http://archive.org/details/royalpurple1988unse">yearbook entry from the Kansas State University yearbook, 1988</a>, which was digitized last year. The image is not particularly clear -- and I cannot account, in any way, for why Pynchon would have been in this photograph (born in 1937 he went to Cornell university) -- but it does appear to show a moustached man, of about age 51 (in my estimation; he doesn't look like an undergraduate) clearly labelled "Thomas Pynchon" in the caption.</p>
<p>A joke? Named coincidence? Seems unlikely to actually be Pynchon, so I don't feel too bad about putting this up!</p>
<p><i>Image copyright, used under fail dealing provisions for purposes of scholarship on a non-commercial basis.</i></p>