Pynchon mention in new book

[Doug Millison]

from the Duke University Press web site:

Latent Destinies: Cultural Paranoia and Contemporary U.S. Narrative
by Patrick O'Donnell

208 pages (September 2000)

ISBN 0-8223-2558-6 Cloth - $49.95
ISBN 0-8223-2587-X Paperback - $17.95

Latent Destinies examines the formation of postmodern sensibilities 
and their relationship to varieties of paranoia that have been seen 
as widespread in this century. Despite the fact that the Cold War has 
ended and the threat of nuclear annihilation has been dramatically 
lessened by most estimates, the paranoia that has characterized the 
period has not gone away. Indeed, it is as if-as O'Donnell 
suggests-this paranoia has been internalized, scattered, and 
reiterated at a multitude of sites: Oklahoma City, Waco, Ruby Ridge, 
Bosnia, the White House, the United Nations, and numerous other 
places.

O'Donnell argues that paranoia on the broadly cultural level is 
essentially a narrative process in which history and postmodern 
identity are negotiated simultaneously. The result is an erasure of 
historical temporality-the past and future become the all-consuming, 
self-aware present. To explain and exemplify this, O'Donnell looks at 
such books and films as Libra, JFK, The Crying of Lot 49, The Truman 
Show, Reservoir Dogs, Empire of the Senseless, Oswald's Tale, The 
Executioner's Song, Underworld, The Killer Inside Me, and Groundhog 
Day. Organized around the topics of nationalism, gender, criminality, 
and construction of history, Latent Destinies establishes cultural 
paranoia as consonant with our contradictory need for multiplicity 
and certainty, for openness and secrecy, and for mobility and 
historical stability.

Demonstrating how imaginative works of novels and films can be used 
to understand the postmodern historical condition, this book will 
interest students and scholars of American literature and cultural 
studies, postmodern theory, and film studies.

   "Latent Destinies provides a careful, lucid, insightful analysis of 
a number of works of contemporary American authors and filmmakers, 
and situates their work within a complex theoretical matrix of social 
connections that enhance our understanding not only of the works 
under discussion but also of the conditions of contemporary American 
culture in which those works circulate."
-Alan Nadel, author of Containment Culture: American Narratives, 
Postmodernism and the Atomic Age


"Latent Destinies provides a smartly informed paradigm for 
understanding postmodern U.S. narratives, both aesthetic and 
theoretical. Examining a representative sample of these, O'Donnell 
finds that they indulge a cultural paranoia that wags the tail of 
their late-capitalist bête noire."-Louis A. Renza, Dartmouth College



Patrick O'Donnell is Professor and Chair of the Department of English 
at Michigan State University. He is author of Echo Chambers: Figuring 
the Voice in Modern Narrative.

watch that URL wrap (if it doesn't work you can also search the web site):
http://www.dukeupress.edu/cgibin/forwardsql/search.cgi?template0=nomatch.htm&template2=books/book_detail_page.htm&user_id=27275&Bmain.Btitle_option=1&Bmain.Btitle_=&Bmain.Btitle_option=1&Bmain.Btitle=Latent+Destinies&Bmain.Subtitle_option=1&Bmain.Subtitle

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