Pynchon and History: Metahistorical Rhetoric and Postmodern Narrative Form in the Novels of Thomas Pynchon

by Shawn Smith

While many previous books on Pynchon allude to his fictional engagement with historical events and figures, this book explores Pynchon as a historical novelist and, by extension, historical thinker. The book interprets Pynchon's four major novels V., Gravity's Rainbow, Vineland, and Mason & Dixon through the prism of historical interpretation and representation. In doing so, it argues that Pynchon's innovative narrative techniques express his philosophy of history and historical representation through the form of his texts.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published July 6, 2005

About the author

SHAWN SMITH is an attorney, corporate executive, and founder of Next Level Consulting. Her articles have appeared in numerous legal and business publications.

Reviews

[Matěj · Rating 3 out of 5]

This study on Pynchon and his relationship with history shows just how deep does the rabbit hole go. Apart from all the postmodernist lingo and allusions, Smith uncovers a lot about the four "big novels". The scope of notes is frankly astonishing, they are often long and offer a great deal of scholarly insight into the various areas of interest Pynchon's prose delves into along the way. The lack of proper editing is something I would not have forseen in a Routledge scholarly publication, a lot of the characters have to witness their names misspelled, some typos are apparent (seige and siege), while the term Liebenraum is either a bizarre joke or a funny error. What is more, in the Gravity's Rainbow chapter, the umlauts are for some reason missing and in the notes they make a comeback. I understand that the editor for the whole Routledge collection (about 20 book length studies on various authors) is somebody who does not know characters from Pynchon's novels, but this was seriously the worst edited scholarly book I have ever seen.