Thoreen & the law

[Terrance]

Thanks again Dave Monroe, for that link to the Law and
Literature page. I think I'll read a few of those as time
permits. David Thoreen's essay there is part of his
dissertation, it is,

"Brave New World Democracy; Manifest Destiny in the Fiction
of Joan Didion, Robert Stone, and Thomas Pynchon" 1994

"The third chapter, in contradistinction to the prevailing
view of Pynchon's texts as exhibitions of postmodern
discontinuities, posits a radical continuity, contending
that *Vineland* reflects not only the history of executive
aggrandizement which has accompanied American expansion, but
also the concomitant threat to Americans' civil rights."

In sum, the dissertation argues that these three writers
interrogate the ethnocentric cultural assumptions that
inform expansionist policies, and encourage their readers to
consider contemporary foreign policy in light of the
original promise of the United States' founding charters,
the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.