Approaches to Teaching Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and Other Works

[Dave Monroe]

Approaches to Teaching Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and Other Works
Editor(s): Thomas H. Schaub

Pages: xiii & 195 pp.
Published: April 2008
ISBN: 9780873528146 (paperback)
ISBN: 9780873528139 (hardcover)

"This helpful volume will benefit all who engage with Pynchon's work.
Highly recommended."
    Choice

As teachers well know, the elements that make Thomas Pynchon exciting
to read and study—the historical references, the multilayered prose,
and the postmodern integration of high and low cultures and science
and literature—often constitute hurdles to undergraduate and graduate
readers alike. The essays gathered in this volume turn these classroom
challenges into assets, showing instructors how to make the
narratives' frustration of reader expectations not only intellectually
rewarding but also part of the joy of reading The Crying of Lot 49,
Gravity's Rainbow, Mason & Dixon, and other Pynchon works, short and
long.

Like all volumes in the Approaches to Teaching series, the collection
opens with a survey of original and supplementary materials. The
essays that follow offer an array of classroom techniques: among them,
ways to contextualize the novels in their historical settings, from
Puritan America through World War II and the volatile 1960s; to use
the texts to explore racial and gender politics and legacies of
colonialism; and to make Pynchon's elaborate prose style accessible to
students. Teachers will also find sample syllabi for courses solely on
Pynchon as well as suggestions for incorporating his work into
graduate and undergraduate classrooms at a range of institutions.

Table of Contents

http://www.mla.org/toc_pynchon

Contributors
Hanjo Berressem
David Cowart
Inger H. Dalsgaard
Amy J. Elias
Norbert Finzsch
Michael Harris
Luc Herman
Molly Hite
Zofia Kolbuszewska
Deborah L. Madsen
Robert L. McLaughlin
Alan Nadel
Stacey Olster
Alison T. J. Preston
Mark Rohland
Todd Rohman
Gary Thompson
Jerry Varsava
Robert N. Watson
Steven Weisenburger

http://www.mla.org/store/CID23/PID336

I apologize profusely for not having/deploying this earlier ...