Paradigms of Paranoia

Dave Monroe against.the.dave at gmail.com
Tue Mar 17 00:37:47 CDT 2015


Paradigms of Paranoia
The Culture of Conspiracy in Contemporary American Fiction
by Samuel Chase Coale

[...]

Conspiracy as embodied in narrative form provides a fertile field for
explorations of the anxiety lying at the heart of the postmodern
experience. Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, Don DeLillo's
Underworld, Toni Morrison's Jazz and Paradise, Joan Didion's
Democracy, Tim O'Brien's In the Lake of the Woods, and Paul Auster's
New York City Trilogy are some of the texts Coale examines for their
representations of isolated individuals at the center of massive,
anonymous master plots that lay beyond their control. These narratives
remind us that our historical sense of national identity has often
been based on the demonizing of others and that American fiction arose
and still flourishes with apocalyptic visions.

http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Paradigms-of-Paranoia,1604.aspx

Coale, Samuel Chase. "Chapter 6. Thomas Pynchon: The Functions of
Conspiracy and the Performance of Paranoia"p. 135-177

http://w.vheissu.net/biblio/pubs.php?p=1018

One caveat: the endnotes from Chs. 3 (except the very 1st one) through
7 were not printed w/ the book (the pagination does not skip, from p.
231 for  that one Ch. 3 note to p. 232 for the [lengthy] Epilogue
endnotes).  Many/most here will no doubt be familiar w/ the Pynchon
(Ch. 6) sources, but ... but I've written to the U of Alabama P,
they're on spring break, but I heard from the press director nigh unto
immediately. I believe he's going to work out something for me, will
be happy to forward whatever I end up w/ to anybody interested.
Excellent chapter, @ any rate, now to spiral around to the rest of the
book ...
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l



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