Pynchon and Beats

[Eric Alan Weinstein University Of London Centre For English Studies]

 I'd go so far as to argue that Burroughs is as much a forefather
 to Pynchon as his Puritan ancestors.  (Burroughs also implies 
what appears in Pynchon as the preterite/elect dichotomy.)  And,
 of course, there is in Burroughs the drugs--ambivalence toward 
them, but also a willingness to use them, the psychic state they
>induce, and the market surrounding them as social metaphor.
>
>I have more trouble seeing Ginsberg's, or even Kerouac's,
>direct influence on TP's writing.
>
>AE
>

        Unquestionably, Pynchon references much the whole history of
 English and American (and other) literatures in the labyrinth of his 
creation. The fun-house images reflected back, however,  reappear to 
us within the peculiar gnosis of Pynchon's vision (a vision far deeper
and more powerful than that of the often delightful trickster, Barth). 
Direct influence is something Pynchon usually escapes; however parody,
reflection, and creative re-contextualizing  is something he cultivates. In
this, I suspect, one finds remnants of the important precursors, perhaps 
the only "direct influences" not entirely escaped: Borges, Gaddis, Joyce. 
I suspect that what Pynchon shares with Burroughs they mutually find
in Kafka, and Pynchon is a more powerful rewriter of Kafka than Burroughs. 

     This is not to say Pynchon, as young reader, read Kafka before
 Burroughs or that he was not then deeply influenced by the Beats.
 At the time, I am sure he was greatly influenced. He would have found
 his desires  reflected in Beat texts: the desire for lived experience; the
 desire to record the alert American mind's mixture of love and outrage 
toward the brute fact of America. However, strong writers are hardly 
honest about canonical heritage, nor could they be. As a mature artist, 
his relationship to Beat writing is at best ambivalent. I suggest however, 
that the mature Pynchon's critique of himself as a young reader  reading 
the Beats may have been one of the formative acts enabling his literary
career.   

  
E.A. Weinstein
Centre For English Studies
University Of London
E.A.Weinstein at qmw.ac.uk