There is a theory going around that the U.S.A. was and still is a gigantic Masonic plot under the ultimate control of the group known as the Illuminati. It is difficult to look for long at the strange single eye crowning the pyramid which is found on every dollar bill and not begin to believe the story, a little. Too many anarchists in 19th-century Europe—Bakunin, Proudhon, Salverio Friscia—were Masons for it to be pure chance. Lovers of global conspiracy, not all of them Catholic, can count on the Masons for a few good shivers and voids when all else fails.

After graduating from high school in 1953 at the age of 16 Pynchon studied engineering physics at Cornell University but left at the end of his second year to serve in the U. In 1958 Pynchon and Cornell classmate Kirkpatrick Sale wrote part or all of a science-fiction musical Minstrel Island which portrayed a dystopian future in which IBM rules the world (Gibbs 1994). In 1957 he returned to Cornell to pursue a degree in English.

After publishing several short stories in the late 1950s and early 1960s he began composing the novels for which he is best known: V. Hailing from Long Island Pynchon served two years in the United States Navy and earned an English degree from Cornell University.