Vineland: Nitpicking for a fight with wikipedia

[Heikki Raudaskoski]

I have access to both articles and can send them to you and
everyone interested. Did someone manage to send them to you
already, Henry?


Heikki


On Mon, 1 Dec 2008, Henry wrote:

> I did a search of Pynchon Vineland on DeepDyve.com, and I found http://qix.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/12/5/865
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> Does anyone have access to it?
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> And has does anyone have access to: Language and Literature, Vol. 12, No. 1, 27-41 (2003)
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> Pynchon, postmodernism and quantification: an empirical content analysis of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow
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> Luc Herman
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> University of Antwerp, Belgium
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> Robert Hogenraad
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> Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium
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> Wim Van Mierlo
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> University of London, UK
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> Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (1973) has been received as a canonical instance of postmodernism. The novel appears to subvert traditional definitions of plot and characterization, yet the narrative retains a nagging sense of order underneath the represented chaos. Simultaneously evoking and undoing patterns on all levels of its narrative structure, Gravity's Rainbow surreptitiously evokes the presence of a night journey (Martindale, 1979). An empirical content analysis of the novel confirms this ambiguous attitude with respect to patterning in the novel, and thus constitutes a first and modest step towards the quantification of postmodernism. First, a thematic analysis, calculating the co-variations of words across the chapters, corroborates the idea of a connectedness that seems to belie, in part, the pervasive presence of a paranoid hermeneutic. Second, a dictionary-based analysis of narrative sequences reveals an inverse night journey pattern that differs markedly !
 fr!
>  om other patterns found for modernist novels. The configurations that were obtained in these analyses show that content analysis can distinguish empirically between two literary - historical concepts.
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> Henry Mu
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert Mahnke
> Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 12:01 PM
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: Re: Vineland: Nitpicking for a fight with wikipedia
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> Further to this, Google Book Search turns up Constructing Postmodernism, by Brian McHale (Routledge, 1992).  Chapter 5 is titled, "Zapping, the art of switching channels: on Vineland," and starts (p 115) with Zoyd leaping through the fake-real window.  Alas, but Google only lets me see the first two pages of the chapter.
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> http://books.google.com/books?id=KBxNCnpGB9IC&pg=PA115&lpg=PA115&dq=vineland+zoyd+wheeler+window&source=web&ots=vmEh8sCfdS&sig=IsntZ4F57Jnz24mhjfH3e2OHlyQ&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result
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> -----Original Message-----
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> >From: Robert Mahnke <robert_mahnke at earthlink.net>
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> >Sent: Dec 1, 2008 10:53 AM
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> >To: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>, pynchon-l at waste.org
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> >Subject: Re: Vineland: Nitpicking for a fight with wikipedia
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> >
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> >
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> >In my mind at least, a key feature of post-modernist art is self-awareness and self-referentiality -- an acknowledgement of the artifice of the project. Viceland certainly goes there, starting with Zoyd's dive through a plate-glass window that isn't glass but candy, the better to simulate a dive through a glass window.
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> >
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> >-----Original Message-----
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> >>From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
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> >>Sent: Dec 1, 2008 10:38 AM
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> >>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
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> >>Subject: Re: Vineland: Nitpicking for a fight with wikipedia
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> >>
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> >>As a concept of a sequential period of time, post WW2 is mostly
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> >>postmodern.
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> >>Try "Catch 22" and "Slaughterhouse 5". Then there's the notion of
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> >>revisionist
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> >>history. The story we're sold is that "the sixties" was a time of
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> >>social foment
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> >>and incredible drugs. "Vineland" shows the central importance of
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> >>Television
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> >>and Television generated products: Fruit Loops, Count Chocula, "designer
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> >>water" and "Made for TV" movies. Vineland also flips all those tales
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> >>we were
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> >>taught from the tube, demonstrating just how far "the man" got into our
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> >>subconscious via cop shows and their ilk.
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> >>
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> >>In my mind, Postmodern is post-God, at least the version of God we
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> >>were taught
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> >>in Sunday School. Some time during the last month I realized that
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> >>"Wicca" really
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> >>is more like a form of Postmodern Mysticism. Most self-described
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> >>Wiccans I've
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> >>encountered have a mish-mosh of belief systems. This is definitely
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> >>reflected in
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> >>Vineland, with what seems like good old western magic getting all
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> >>mixed up
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> >>with Buddhist and other oriental mystical philosophies.
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> >>On top of all that, Vineland often comes off as the biggest, wildest
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> >>"Simpsons"
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> >>episode evah.
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> >>
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> >>On Dec 1, 2008, at 7:00 AM, Dave Monroe wrote:
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> >>> On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 7:45 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
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> >>> wrote:
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> >>>
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> >>>> Described as 'postmodern' in wikipedia listing.
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> >>>>
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> >>>> How, besides that it was published AFTER modernism, does "Vineland"
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> >>>> get called that?
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> >>>
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> >>> See, e.g., ...
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> >>>
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> >>> Totalizing Postmodernism: Master-narratives in Pynchon's Vineland
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> >>> By Bruce A. Sullivan
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> >>>
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> >>> http://www.themodernword.com/Pynchon/papers_sullivan.html
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> >>>
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> >>> On the other hand ...
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> >>>
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> >>> Palmeri, Frank.
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> >>> Other than Postmodern?--Foucault, Pynchon, Hybridity, Ethics
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> >>> Postmodern Culture - Volume 12, Number 1, September 2001
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> >>>
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> >>> http://www.muse.uq.edu.au/login?uri=/journals/pmc/
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> >>> v012/12.1palmeri.html
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> >>>
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> >>> ... but do note that for Jean-François Lyotard, at least, that "post"
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> >>> isn't necessarily chronological.  St. Augustine was "ppsotmodern"
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> >>> according to JFL ...
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> >>>
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