Mapping the World: Thomas Pynchon's Global Novels

[Monte Davis]

The value of the article for me is almost entirely in its discussion of GR,
M&D, and AtD as one extraordinarily ambitious project. I take the
discussion of Engdahl, the Nobel Prize, and the insularity of American
fiction as what the abstract calls it -- a starting point. The substance
really begins on pp. 4-6 with discussion of several calls for a "world
literature" (whether written by Americans or not), and then makes the case
that Pynchon's Big 3 are, superbly, just that.

The other day, I wrote here that Beckert's Empire of Cotton helps to frame
important themes of "P's grandest narrative, which is really *everything*
that boiled out of Europe across five other continents -- plus the
occasional Vheissu and Vormance ventures -- from 1500 to 2000." That's
still Eurocentric, but I don't think many Asians, Africans, Australians,
and non-US Western Hemisphereans would deny that much of their history over
these centuries was importantly, often decisively *knotted into* that of
Europe and, more recently, the US.

See, I don't care whether or not Pynchon gets the Nobel Prize. (If he did,
it would be the 1974 National Book Award or 1975 Howells Medal all over
again, and we'd have another 15,000 articles about the "reclusive" author.)
Yes, US fiction *is* comparatively insular, but IMO for predictable reasons
of history, geography, educational practices, and audience/market size
rather than out of any innate, US-specific cultural autism or narcissism.
But what interests, excites and moves me is how successfully Pynchon's work
"contains everything" -- rather than whether that's what the Nobel
committee wants (or should want), or whether other American novelists
should get out more.

On Thu, Jan 21, 2016 at 9:42 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> To All Relative Newbies on the Plist.
>
> This shows what levels of connection and textual memory you might get to
> if you read Gravity's Rainbow ten times. And the others more than once or
> twice. As I
> am always saying, if we all were closer to the Janeites or Proust readers,
> it
> would be a better world!
>
>
> I urge you to read this before the GR read, if you haven't.
> Tore Rye, who might still be a quiet lurker on the Plist is or was on for
> a long time.
> (here--or offlist?) is where I learned he may have read GR ten times and,
> therefore
> what a slacker I have been all my life. Or, to repurpose James Wright's
> line: I
> have wasted my ( reading) life.
>
> Tore should be hosting the read but he also has a real life AND, none of
> this is to intimidate
> even if you have never read GR (or finished it. Like Norman Mailer).
> Asking any questions
> is one of the best ways, as we can see from Mike's posting for his new
> translation, to touch bottom
> in the text. ---there are no stupid questions as the lie in the classroom
> and the business world goes,---
> but it may, like little spots of anarchy in Pynchon's worlds, be true here.
>
> Tidbit. I once posted here that Against the Day 'contained everything'.
> Tore
> posted that GR "contained everything". we had a fun exchange akin to
> mathematicians
> talking about sizes of infinity when I attempted to trump him with
> "Against the Day contains everything
> & GR".....(I only mean this in a fun, limited way, of course.)
>
> As I have told Tore directly, when I read Swedish Academy guy Engdahl say
> what he did about
> American literature I knew why TRP would not get a Nobel. They had to know
> that, even without
> Tore showing all the interconnections among the works, ATD showed his was
> a world imagination.
> So, he had been ruled out for other reasons. (I have an unproveable notion
> regarding that).
>
> Mark
> PS. Waiting for Godot Not. (Laura you are going to regret all the time
> you've given me. An improv jazz-like
> mostly soloing i had figured, it won't be. Big jazz band I hope with as
> many characters and plot strands
> as Against the Day.) Get all your slacker friends aboard. Tore's piece
> shows why no serious contemporary
> reader CAN NOT read Pynchon in depth. (I loved how mini Franzen appears
> herein.)
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 11:20 AM, Martin Eve <martin at martineve.com> wrote:
>
>> Mapping the World: Thomas Pynchon's Global Novels
>>
>> Tore Rye Andersen
>>
>> Taking Horace Engdahl’s critique of the insularity of American literature
>> as its starting point, the essay goes on to discuss Richard Gray’s and
>> Michael Rothberg’s recent articles in American Literary History, both of
>> which call for a literature capable of addressing the contemporary global
>> reality. While both Gray and Rothberg claim that such a literature has yet
>> to be written, the essay argues that Thomas Pynchon’s three novels
>> Gravity’s Rainbow, Mason & Dixon and Against the Day can profitably be read
>> together as an ambitiously conceived world-historical trilogy which tells
>> the story of the gestation and emergence of our contemporary global reality.
>>
>> Published in Orbit. http://doi.org/10.16995/orbit.178
>> --
>> Dr. Martin Paul Eve
>> Senior Lecturer in Literature, Technology and Publishing
>> Birkbeck, University of London
>>
>> T: 0203 073 8420
>> E: martin.eve at bbk.ac.uk
>> W: https://www.martineve.com
>> R: 416, 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD
>>
>> Password [a cultural history]: http://meve.io/password
>> Pynchon and Philosophy: http://meve.io/pynchonphilo
>> Open Access and the Humanities: http://meve.io/oahums
>>
>> Director, Birkbeck Centre for Technology and Publishing
>> Founder, Open Library of the Humanities (https://www.openlibhums.org)
>> Chief Editor, Orbit: Writing Around Pynchon (https://www.pynchon.net)
>> Senior Online Editor, Alluvium, (http://www.alluvium-journal.org)
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
>
>
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