On Wednesday evening, the publishing industry will gather in black tie for the National Book Awards, where some of the most prestigious literary prizes in the business will be handed out.

One of the top contenders for the fiction award, perhaps not shockingly, has opted to skip it.

That contender is Thomas Pynchon, the author of “Bleeding Edge” and one of five finalists in fiction. Mr. Pynchon, famously averse to public appearances, has mostly avoided being photographed and interviewed. He will not be attending the event, Ann Godoff, the president and editor in chief of Penguin Press, Mr. Pynchon’s publisher, said on Monday.

(In an article in August, New York magazine, lacking a recent photo of the author, resorted to a “speculative rendering” of what Mr. Pynchon, who is in his mid-70’s, might look like today, complete with unkempt gray hair, crow’s feet and a mustache.)

Harold Augenbraum, the executive director of the National Book Foundation, which administers the awards, said that Mr. Pynchon certainly could win the award even if he was not there to accept it.

In 2007, Mr. Augenbraum noted, the author Denis Johnson was working in Iraq on the night of the ceremony and won in the fiction category for his Vietnam War novel “Tree of Smoke.” His wife, Cindy Lee Johnson, accepted the award on his behalf.

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“Bleeding Edge” was one of the most anticipated novels of 2013, but was welcomed with uneven reviews: for example, writing in The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani called it “a scattershot work that is, by turns, entertaining and wearisome, energetic and hokey, delightfully evocative and cheaply sensational.”

The other finalists in fiction are Rachel Kushner for “The Flamethrowers” (Scribner); Jhumpa Lahiri for “The Lowland” (Knopf); James McBride for “The Good Lord Bird” (Riverhead); and George Saunders for “Tenth of December” (Random House). The other categories are nonfiction, young people’s literature and poetry.

Mr. Pynchon is married to Melanie Jackson, a literary agent, who is expected to attend the awards on Wednesday.

Mr. Pynchon’s name appears on a seating chart for the ceremony, which features a formal dinner of baked tagliolini, loin of lamb and tiramisu for more than 700 people. Organizers of the event said that they tentatively expected an editor at Penguin to fill the seat.

David Steinberger, the chief executive of the Perseus Books Group and the chairman of the National Book Foundation, said that whether Mr. Pynchon appears or not, a win would place him among only a handful of authors who have repeated, including Philip Roth, John Updike and John Cheever.

“You’re really in rare air if you win this a second time,” Mr. Steinberger said.

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