This odd little documentary isn't really about Thomas Pynchon, the author of V, Gravity's Rainbo/w and The Crying of Lot 49.

In fact, it's sometimes incurious about his life and work, concentrating rather on the mix of fragments, whispers and urban myths that have arisen about Pynchon, due to his aversion to being photographed or interviewed.

The film has a saucer-eyed reverence for Pynchon's status as a "recluse". But could it be that, like Thomas Harris, he just doesn't care for personal publicity?

Pynchon doesn't live in Mexico, or the moon, but in New York; unlike JD Salinger, he is still publishing, and he authorised a costly promotional push for his 1997 novel Mason & Dixon. This obtuse film semi-deliberately fails to engage Pynchon as a writer or as a person. It's pretty exasperating.