Pynchon Panel coming up at TCL

[John M. Krafft]

    Pynchon Panel at TCL, Louisville, KY, February 23, 1996

    The panel "Gravity's Rainbow: Text, True Text, Intertext, and
Context" will be presented at this year's Twentieth-Century
Literature Conference at the University of Louisville, 10:45 am,
Friday, February 23.  The participants are:

John M. Krafft, Chair
Jeffrey S. Baker, "'Somewhere among the wastes of the world': Cold
    War Ideology as Pragmatism's 'Idealist Tradition,' and
Pynchon's
    Reconstructive Postmodernism"
Terry Caesar, "Texts of the Text: Citations in Gravity's Rainbow"
Inger H. Dalsgaard, "The Linking Feature: Degenerative Systems in
    Pynchon and Spengler"
Heikki Raudaskoski, "'Half Sea Half Land': Seeking the Fulcrum of
    America in Moby-Dick and Gravity's Rainbow" 

    A common thread loosely binding these papers is a concern with
texts and textuality.  What are GR's identity, status and power as
text?  How does it reflect on itself as a text?  How does it stand
in relation (indebtedness, opposition, etc.) to other
texts--canonical, non-canonical, imaginary?  How do other texts
illuminate it?  Also prominent in the grouping are questions of the
novel's historical, literary-historical, ideological, and
philosophical contexts, for example, its cultural critique and the
prospects it holds out for liberation.  ("subtext" anyone?)

John M. Krafft, English                  | Miami University--Hamilton
Voice:  (513) 785-3142 or (513) 868-2330 | 1601 Peck Boulevard
Fax:    (513) 785-3145                   | Hamilton, OH  45011-3399
E-mail: krafftjm at muohio.edu
WWW:    http://muhaxp.ham.muohio.edu/~krafftjm