Thomas Pynchon educated at Oyster Bay High School
Education and military career
A "voracious reader and precocious writer", Pynchon is believed to have skipped two grades before high school. Pynchon attended Oyster Bay High School in Oyster Bay, where he was awarded "student of the year" and contributed short fictional pieces to his school newspaper. These juvenilia incorporated some of the literary motifs and recurring subject matter he would use throughout his career: oddball names, sophomoric humor, illicit drug use, and paranoia.
Pynchon graduated from high school in 1953 at the age of 16. That fall, he went to Cornell University to study engineering physics. At the end of his sophomore year, he enlisted to serve in the U.S. Navy. He attended boot camp at United States Naval Training Center Bainbridge, Maryland, then received training to be an electrician at a base in Norfolk, Virginia. In 1956, he was aboard the destroyer USS Hank in the Mediterranean during the Suez Crisis. According to recollections from his Navy friends, Pynchon said at the time that he did not intend to complete his college education.
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