Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

[Dave Monroe]

Yale / English
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
By Amy Hungerford | The American Novel Since 1945 Lecture 12 of 26


Lecture Description

Professor Hungerford introduces this lecture by reviewing the ways
that authors on the syllabus up to this point have dealt with the
relationship between language and life, that collection of elusive or
obvious things that for literary critics fall under the category of
"the Real." The Real can shout out from a work of art, as it sometimes
does in Black Boy, or haunt it, as in Lolita. It can elude authors
like Kerouac and Barth for widely different reasons. Placing Pynchon
firmly in the context of the political upheaval of the 1960s that he
is often seen to avoid, Hungerford argues that Pynchon--no less than a
writer of faith like Flannery O'Connor--is deeply invested in
questions of meaning and emotional response, so that The Crying of Lot
49 is a sincere call for connection, and a lament for loss, as much as
it is an ironic, playful puzzle.
Course Description

In "The American Novel Since 1945" students will study a wide range of
works from 1945 to the present. The course traces the formal and
thematic developments of the novel in this period, focusing on the
relationship between writers and readers, the conditions of
publishing, innovations in the novel's form, fiction's engagement with
history, and the changing place of literature in American culture. The
reading list includes works by Richard Wright, Flannery O'Connor,
Vladimir Nabokov, Jack Kerouac, J. D. Salinger, Thomas Pynchon, John
Barth, Maxine Hong Kingston, Toni Morrison, Marilynne Robinson, Cormac
McCarthy, Philip Roth and Edward P. Jones. The course concludes with a
contemporary novel chosen by the students in the class.

http://academicearth.org/lectures/thomas-pynchon-the-crying-of-lot-49