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While at Cornell, Pynchon became a friend of [[Richard Fariña]], and both briefly led what Pynchon has called a "micro-cult" around Oakley Hall's [[1958 in literature|1958]] novel ''[[Warlock (novel)|Warlock]]''. (He later reminisced about his college days in the introduction he wrote in 1983 for Fariña's novel ''[[Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me]],'' first published in 1966.) Pynchon also reportedly attended lectures given by [[Vladimir Nabokov]], who then taught literature at Cornell. While Nabokov later said that he had no memory of Pynchon (although Nabokov's wife, Vera, who graded her husband's class papers, commented that she remembered his distinctive handwriting; his later handwriting appears unexceptional), other teachers at Cornell, like the novelist James McConkey, recall him as being a gifted and exceptional student. Pynchon received his BA in June 1959.

After leaving Cornell, Pynchon began to work on his first novel. From February 1960 to September 1962, he was employed as a technical writer at Boeing in [[Seattle, Washington|Seattle]], where he compiled safety articles for the ''Bomarc Service News,''<ref>Wisnicki 2000-1</ref> a support newsletter for the BOMARC surface-to-air missile deployed by the [[U.S. Air Force]]. Pynchon's experiences at Boeing inspired his depictions of the "[[Yoyodyne]]" corporation in ''[[V.]]'' and ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]],'' and both his background in physics and the technical journalism he undertook at Boeing provided much raw material for ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]].'' When it was published in 1963, Pynchon's novel ''V.'' won a William Faulkner Foundation Award for best first novel of the year.