1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910810674703321

Autore

Malpas Simon

Titolo

Thomas Pynchon  / / Simon Malpas and Andrew Taylor

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Manchester, UK : , : Manchester University Press, , 2015

©2013

ISBN

1-78499-239-9

1-78499-238-0

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (vii, 244 pages) : digital file(s)

Collana

Contemporary American and Canadian writers

Disciplina

813.54

Soggetti

Literature

Literary Studies: Fiction, Novelists & Prose Writers

LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General

Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references ( [228] - 238 pages) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction: 'the fork in the road' -- Refuge and refuse in Slow Learner -- Convoluted reading: identity, interpretation and reference in The Crying of Lot 49 -- Disappearing points: V. -- 'A progressive knotting into': power, presentation and history in Gravity's Rainbow -- Cultural nostalgia and political possibility in Vineland -- Mason & Dixon and the transnational vortices of historical fiction -- 'I believe in incursion from elsewhere': political and aesthetic disruption in Against the Day -- Conclusion: Inherent Vice as Pynchon Lite?

Sommario/riassunto

Now available in paperback, this is a comprehensive study of the most influential figure in postwar American literature. Over a writing career spanning more than fifty years, Thomas Pynchon has been at the forefront of America's engagement with postmodern literary possibilities. In chapters that address the full range of Pynchon's career, from his earliest short stories and first novel, V., to his most recent work, this book offers highly accessible and detailed readings of a writer whose work is indispensable to understanding how the



American novel has met the challenges of postmodernity. The authors discuss Pynchon's relationship to literary history, his engagement with discourses of science and utopianism, his interrogation of imperialism and his preoccupation with the paranoid sensibility. Invaluable to Pynchon scholars and to everyone working in the field of contemporary American fiction, this study explores how Pynchon's complex narratives work both as exuberant examples of formal experimentation and as serious interventions in the political health of the nation.