Pynchon & Politics( Lacey essay)

[Markekohut]

He did enough homework for me....mirrors reflecting mirrors is not what we need more of.
He has his field. He reads Pynchon. He did the assignment...

Superbly. 

Sent from my iPad

On Jan 29, 2013, at 7:52 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> 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.
>