Gothic Pynchon

[Enobarbus]

>From Chapter 8, "Poe And Popular Irrationalism"

The major writers fully absorbed the paradoxes of
sensational literature  but mightily resisted the prevailing
tendency toward vulgarization and  inhumanity in popular
culture.   
Excerpts from the Introduction:
The deep affinities between the major writers and their
popular  contemporaries may be bypassed in selective
readings in the unfamiliar literature of the day, creating a
lopsided view of antebellum popular culture, one that
greatly exaggerates the importance of Conventional
literature while neglected the
immense cultural power of what I call  Subversive
literature, which was bizarre, nightmarish, and often
politically radical. The tendency has been to view the works
of writers like Melville and Hawthorne as a revolt against a
sentimentalized, optimistic literary culture....little has
been written on the Subversive and  Romantic Adventure
modes, which not only became increasingly influential as
time passed but also broke new literary ground that was
cultivated by the major writers....  Much of this book is
devoted to showing the ways in which the social and literary
environment became riddled with moral mixtures and
ambiguities that prompted various literary responses.
Conventional literature tried to avoid or defeat these
ambiguities; Romantic Adventure  either evaded or
objectified them; Subversive literature allowed them to 
erupt volcanically in often chaotic,  fragmented fashion.  

http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/eng372/intro-h3.htm

Check out Operation High-jump. 

Antony: ... The higher Nilus swells, The more it promises.
As it ebbs, the seedsman Upon the slime and ooze
 scatters his grain, And shortly comes to harvest.

 Lepidus: You've strange serpents there.

 Antony: Aye Lepidus.

 Lepidus: Your serpent of Egypt is bred now of your mud by
the operation of your sun. So is your crocodile ....
 What manner of thing is your crocodile?

 Antony: It is shaped, sir, like itself, and is as broad as
it hath breadth. It is just so high as it is, and moves with
it  own organs [sic]. It lives by that which nourisheth it,
and the elements once out of it, it transmigrates
(II.vii.24).

 Worth calling attention to here is Antony's pointed
reference to metempsychosis, the Pythagorean notion of
 rebirth at death in consequence of spiritual migration.