Pynchon's back catalogue

[Rob Jackson]

> From: Tore Rye Andersen <torerye@[omitted]>
> To: <pynchon-l@[omitted]>
> Subject: RE: Another way to categorize TRPs oeuvre
> Date: Fri, 3 Oct 2008 09:45:25 +0200
>
> Finally, look at the structural similarities of these three novels:  
> As opposed to V.,
> Lot 49, and VL, all three are divided into a few named parts (3, 4,  
> and 5), and all three
> have seventy-something chapters.
>
> M&D, AtD and GR constitute Pynchon's Great Global Trilogy,  
> describing the overall
> historical development of the world (the western world in  
> particular, it should be
> pointed out) through the most important historical cusps of the past  
> 250 years.

Not sure why you'd leave out V. from this "global" set of texts. What  
of the history of Thurn and Taxis in Lot 49? The Godzilla and yakuza  
sections in VL? And AtD is more like V. redux than a component of any  
sort of coherent trilogy.

Factoring in some of the short stories as well (particularly TSI), it  
seems that Pynchon's primary literary modus operandi is to have a  
bunch of cohesive short stories and novellas on the burner all at once  
and then he intersplices them together to construct a "novel". V. and  
AtD are clunkier examples of this process, far less successfully  
formed into an integrated whole than either GR or M&D, which suggests  
that they were not the result of such a long gestation period as those  
two major works demonstrably had. Even so, there are some obvious  
signs in GR as well, such as the near-random insertion of the sci fi  
story of Byron the Bulb. But generally speaking GR and M&D hang  
together much better because the vision of the whole was clear in the  
author's mind from the outset (though, arguably, the grand scope and  
scale of GR got the better of him in the end, leading to the post- 
apocalyptic disintegration of the narrative itself), and this perhaps  
wasn't the case with V. or AtD.

Sounds to me from the published reviews that IV is quite similar to  
Lot 49 in scope and style.

best regards