PYNCHON'S POETICS: Interfacing Theory and Text

by Hanjo Berressem

Pynchon's Poetics
  is a provocative, intelligent analysis of V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's
  Rainbow , and Vineland . Hanjo Berrssem examines these works in the
  light of post-structuralist thought and literary theory, investigating the notion
  of subjectivity and the relations between the subject, culture, and language.
 

Genres: Literary Criticism

288 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1992

Reviews

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

It goes without saying that Thomas Pynchon's works defy easy understanding. So when a book illuminates a pathway through Pynchon's labyrinthine novels, it is be hailed as an important breakthrough for both reader and critic alike. Hanjo Berressem's Pynchon's Poetics offers such a literary roadmap to follow as an approach to the first four of Pynchon's novels: V. (1963), The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), Gravity's Rainbow (1973), and Vineland (1990). (These were the Pynchon novels in print at the time Berressem published Pynchon's Poetics in 1993.) This study is not a Reader's Digest version of Pynchon's works nor is it a quick run-through of critical theory, and so the reader would do well to have read one or more of his novels and to grasp at least the basics of literary theory before embarking on Berressem's erudite presentation. Those initial barriers aside, Berressem provides a way of reading Pynchon through the lens of some of the most influential figures in modern literary and philosophical thought such as Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and Jean Baudrillard. Berressem interprets Pynchon's works through a clear understanding of post-structuralist, deconstructionist, and postmodern perspectives. For lay readers, these terms might sound like intellectual gobbledy-gook, but the basic premise of modern literary theory stems from the division between sign and signifier, the gap that separates language as a symbolic construction, and the meaning given to these symbols. Pynchon, like other postmodern writers, tends to depict this gap as an inherent quandary in human life, and casting into doubt larger narratives that predetermine human thought. Postmodernism is itself a mode of writing arguably born out of the world left behind following World War Two and the advent of nuclear weapons.

Berressem points out how effectively and repeatedly Pynchon exploits and explores the instability of meaning whether in cultural, historical, political, or scientific contexts, and how the language systems of modern life reinforce ideas that subjugate and hinder human freedom. Since Pynchon's novels are dark visions of modern life, Berressem's tools underscore the arguably coopting relationship between language and the institutions in which modern ideas and their linguistic constructs are formulated. Berressem explores a particular angle on each of Pynchon's novels. Berressems explores one chapter from V. called "V. in Love", the strange relationship between the mysterious woman V. and a French ballerina, Melanie L'Heuremaudit. The Crying of Lot 49 and the adventures of Oedipa Maas are the focus of the chapter called "Writing the Subject". Gravity's Rainbow, the longest of Pynchon's early works and arguably the most complex, is studied in the three chapters "The Real Text", "Text as Film, Film as Text" and "The Fatal Word". Vineland (1990) receives treatment as well, the last of Pynchon's novels published prior to Mason and Dixon (1997).

Pynchon's Poetics sheds a fascinating light on these novels through other thinkers' philosophical perceptions, thereby creating a full and masterful expose on Pynchon's early masterworks.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

In contrast to other critics who discuss the dominant themes or allusions in Pynchon’s work, Berressam deploys the post-structural concepts of theorists Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan and Jean Baudrillard in readings of V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow and Vineland.

Acquired Nov 5, 2006
P.T. Campbell Bookseller, London, Ontario