Thomas Pynchon and the Dark Passages of History (PDF)

<p>Thomas Pynchon helped pioneer the postmodern aesthetic. His formidable body of work challenges readers to think and perceive in ways that anticipate&mdash;with humor, insight, and cogency&mdash;much that has emerged in the field of literary theory over the past few decades. For David Cowart, Pynchon&rsquo;s most profound teachings are about history&mdash;history as myth, as rhetorical construct, as false consciousness, as prologue, as mirror, and as seedbed of national and literary identities.</p><p>In one encyclopedic novel after another, Pynchon has reconceptualized historical periods that he sees as culturally definitive. Examining Pynchon&rsquo;s entire body of work, Cowart offers an engaging, metahistorical reading of V.; an exhaustive analysis of the influence of German culture in Pynchon&rsquo;s early work, with particular emphasis on <i>Gravity&rsquo;s Rainbow</i>; and a critical spectroscopy of those dark stars, <i>Mason &amp; Dixon</i> and <i>Against the Day</i>. He defends the California fictions <i>The Crying of Lot 49</i>, <i>Vineland</i>, and<i> Inherent Vice</i> as<i> roman fleuve</i> chronicling the decade in which the American tapestry began to unravel. Cowart ends his study by considering Pynchon&rsquo;s place in literary history.</p><p>Cowart argues that Pynchon has always understood the facticity of historical narrative and the historicity of storytelling&mdash;not to mention the relations of both story and history to myth. <i>Thomas Pynchon and the Dark Passages of History</i> offers a deft analysis of the problems of history as engaged by our greatest living novelist and argues for the continuity of Pynchon&rsquo;s historical vision.</p>