Pynchon & Politics( Lacey essay)

[Joseph Tracy]

Yea, he really should have done his homework.  A lot hinges on the word serious. I think every writer who is not a pure propagandist or jokester is serious, and  even a fair percentage of jokesters, but who exactly qualifies as a "political theorist"?
On Jan 29, 2013, at 7:21 PM, alice wellintown wrote:

>>> 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.