Pynchon & Politics( Lacey essay)

[alice wellintown]

>> 1) I didn't get the impression that Lacey was saying he was the first to
>> look at Pynchon politics, only that the bulk of criticism is literary, and
>> some  political writing was, according to him, over-concerned with
>> conspiracy/paranoia.  A bit too nit-picky to interest me, though I  agree
>> that there are other political Pynchon essays.

There are dozens of essays, journals, articles, and several full
length studies, dissertations, and books dedicated to Pynchon's
politics. There is, as mentioned, a Law Journal that takes up Pynchon
and the Law.  Lacey states:
 Scholarship on Pynchon’s work has grown into a cottage industry,
especially in literary studies. But, up to this point, Pynchon has
failed to attract any serious attention from political theorists, even
though he is arguably the most important novelist writing in English
today about the organization of power in the postmodern world.  On the
one hand, the unwillingness of political theorists to tackle Pynchon
is understandable.


This is how he begins. Again, claiming that one's article or essay or
book is fresh and original, opens new avenues, explores ignored
terrain,  is a fairly common way to proceed. But here the claim is
made not five years after publication, or ten, or even twenty, but 30
plus years.  Moreover, the claim is made after the cottage industry
had Vineland and M&D, SL Introduction, and several other essays that
expose the Political Pynchon, then two more novels. After VL the
cottage industry exploded with political readings. And, of course,
there were those who maintained that Pynchon was writing political
sature from the start.

So, again, not a key point, but there it is. One wonders how Lacey
managed to miss all those other studeis of Pynchon's politics.