An Index to Pynchon's Shorter Works

Abstract

To come to an understanding of any writer's work, critics want to examine not only the primary texts but also any available scraps of other writing, especially writing about the writer's own work, other literature, or any subject related to his or her fictions or fiction-making. With Thomas Pynchon, the amount of this other writing is still managable for an indexer, even if the concept of the index is being stretched to a logical extreme when various texts are combined within one matrix. This particular index began straightforwardly as an index to <em>Slow Learner </em>(1984), but almost immediately two issues arose: (1) any index of Pynchon's short fiction should include the only story not collected in <em>Slow Learner</em>–<em>"Mortality </em>and Mercy in Vienna"; and (2) if the Introduction to <em>Slow Learner </em>was to be indexed, then the inclusion of Pynchon's other non-fiction seemed only logical. Therefore, the index produced includes the following texts (see Works Cited for relevant bibliographic information) with identifying codes that precede the page numbers listed in the index.