Possibly the most accomplished writer of prose in English since James Joyce... Sentence by sentence he can do more than any novelist of this century with the resources of the English-American language
London Review of Books
Anything from the most monstrous talent in the post-war West should be pursued in earnest. I've eaten two copies already
Time Out
Thomas Pynchon is the Gargantua of modern fiction... In <i>Slow Learner</i> he breaks cover for the first time with a remarkable open handed portrait of the writer as a young man
Sunday Times
Pynchon at his best
Guardian
Intriguing material for Pynchon fans and critics
Kirkus Review
Everybody gets told to write about what they know. The trouble with many of us is…we are often unaware of the scope and structure of our ignorance.
Thomas Pynchon’s literary career was launched not with the release of his widely acclaimed first novel, V., but with the publication in literary magazines of the five stories collected here. In his introduction to Slow Learner, the author reviews his early work with disarming candour and recalls the American cultural landscape of the early post-Beat era in which the stories were written
‘Thomas Pynchon is the Gargantua of modern fiction... In Slow Learner he breaks cover for the first time with a remarkable open-handed portrait of the writer as a young man’ Sunday Times
‘An exhilarating spectacle of greatness discovering its powers’ New Republic
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR