Ideas of Order in the Novels of Thomas PynchonSomewhere near the beginning of this incisive critical study of perhaps the most elusive and, to some minds, structurally disordered of living writers, Molly Hite notes that the idea of order has always fascinated novelists. She attributes this to the genre's being a hybrid, committed as it is, on the one hand, to a rigorous teleology in which events exist for the sake of resolution, and, on the other, to imitating a world that stubbornly refuses to ad up. the teleological impetus of narrative, she notes, reflects a 2a God-ordered universe,3 while the mimetic tendency describes 2a man-centered world. 3 And because the two world views are irreconcilable, they pose a dilemmathe dilemma that Pynchon treats satirically in his three novels: that the alternative to theology is paranoia. In confronting his characters with evidence that either a transcendent power imposes order on the world, or that, in the absence of such a power, all order is illusory, Pynchon parodies a postromantic attitude that takes these extremes as exhaustive. He invites his charactersand his readersto consider and to regard as somehow 2authorized3 such interpretations as that either some version of Providence, be it benign or malign, is directing history to its own ends, or events are perfectly discrete and human life is meaningless. And these are interpretations that Pynchon regards, not only as opposing, but as exclusive; and they exclude not only one another, but claim also to exclude that 2middle3 region of meaning and discourse that is the traditional subject matter of the novel. By manipulating these extremes, Pynchon provokes his readers to reconsider the grounds for meaning and value that characterize the secular human world the novel traditionally produces. Like all great innovators in fiction, he reinvents his form by discovering new possibilities in the novel's defining conditions. Like his heroine Oedipa Maas, he sets out to 2project a world3the novelist's fundamental taskbut unlike Oedipa he recognizes that a world adequate to human reality must remain open to possibility. It can neither be eternally ordered toward a predestined end, nor can it be chaotic. Pynchon's fictional worlds are, accordingly, pluralistic, and are governed, not by a rigid, absolute, transcendentally imposed idea of order, but by multiple partial, overlapping, and often conflicting ideas of order. - Publisher. |
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Page 41
... present and chapters that take place in a quasi - historical " past . " This " past " is not merely an earlier segment of the same historical continuum . It is radically different from the present because it exists as a collection of ...
... present and chapters that take place in a quasi - historical " past . " This " past " is not merely an earlier segment of the same historical continuum . It is radically different from the present because it exists as a collection of ...
Page 59
... present " chapters describe the adventures of Benny Profane , Herbert Stencil , the Whole Sick Crew , and various associates and hangers - on during the years 1955 and 1956. These chapters seem relatively straightforward be- cause they ...
... present " chapters describe the adventures of Benny Profane , Herbert Stencil , the Whole Sick Crew , and various associates and hangers - on during the years 1955 and 1956. These chapters seem relatively straightforward be- cause they ...
Page 139
... present open to surprises by undermining the stability of that ap- parently rigid entity , the past . If this past is going to necessi- tate even certain incidents in the present , there should be some agreement on just what it is - on ...
... present open to surprises by undermining the stability of that ap- parently rigid entity , the past . If this past is going to necessi- tate even certain incidents in the present , there should be some agreement on just what it is - on ...
Contents
Including Middles | 13 |
Duplicity and Duplication in V | 47 |
Purity as Parody in The Crying of Lot 49 | 75 |
Copyright | |
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action Andrei Voznesensky apocalyptic appears assumptions becomes Blicero chaos chapters closure coherence conclusion connections context conventional cosmic Crying of Lot destiny ellipses endlessly Entropy Enzian Essays everything exist experience fact G. E. M. Anscombe Gödel's theorem Gravity's Rainbow Hereros human Ideas of Order implications insight Katje language meaning meaningless metaphor modernist Mondaugen's multiple Murphy's law myth narrative Oedipa Oedipa's world origin parabola paranoia parody past pattern Peenemünde perspective plot Pointsman Pökler possible post horn present Preterite proliferate promise providential history Pynchon is able Pynchon's ellipsis Pynchon's fictional Pynchon's novels Rathenau reader reading reality relations resemblance revelation rocket secular history seems sense shape significance Slothrop Stencil story structures favoring death suggests symbol Tchitcherine theory things Thomas Pynchon tion totalizing trajectory Trans transcendent Tristero ultimate unity universe V-2 rocket Vheissu vision Wernher von Braun words York