I came," she said, "hoping you could talk me out of a fantasy." Cherish it!" cried Hilarious, fiercely. "What else do any of you have? Hold it tightly by it's little tentacle, don't let the Freudians coax it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you. Whatever it is, hold it dear, for when you lose it you go over by that much to the others. You begin to cease to be.

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.