THOMAS PYNCHON'S NOVELS AS ALLEGORIES OF CRITICAL READING PRACTICES SINCE ...

248 Pages·2010·0.9 MB·English

THE READER’S PROGRESS: THOMAS PYNCHON’S NOVELS

AS ALLEGORIES OF CRITICAL READING PRACTICES

SINCE 1945

by

TOBIAS JULIAN MEINEL

A DISSERTATION

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
in the Department of English
in the Graduate School of
The University of Alabama

TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA

2010
Copyright Tobias Julian Meinel 2010
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ABSTRACT

This project describes the influence of post-1945 cultural, societal, and political
developments on reading practices in literature departments in the United States. Reading has
been central to the way academics saw themselves in relation to their socio-political
surroundings and has been a direct response to or expression of contemporary pressures between
the years after World War II and the present. The distinct reading zeitgeist of each of these
decades allows us to identify a number of paradigmatic reading stances: readers in the ivory
tower, paranoid readers, doubtful readers, resisting readers, meta-readers, Luddite readers, and
iconoclast readers.
Thomas Pynchon is one of the few American authors who have published over this exact
time span. His novels, when interpreted as allegories of reading, not only reflect the complex
changes that have taken place in the reading zeitgeist since 1945 but also lure their readers into
assuming certain roles. This “interpellative” function of Pynchon’s novels works in a way that
disrupts and challenges the dominant reading paradigm. Pynchon’s sustained preoccupation with
reading not only unifies his later novels with his “classical” work of the 1960s and 1970s but
also shows him as the most prominent observer of and commentator on post-1945 reading
practices in the academy.

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AtD Against the Day
CL The Crying of Lot 49
En “Entropy”
GR Gravity’s Rainbow
MD Mason & Dixon
SR “The Small Rain”
VL Vineland
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
An often quoted sentence from Pirate Prentice’s vision of London’s evacuation at the
beginning of Gravity’s Rainbow sums up a recurring feeling while working on this dissertation:
“No, this is not a disentanglement from, but a progressive knotting into—…” Having felt more
than once that my project was turning into something of a Gordian Knot, I want to thank
everyone who helped me disentangle my thoughts and tie them into the following 200 or so
pages.
First of all, thank you to my dissertation director Fred Whiting, who has helped me
throughout this project with the most useful advice and the best pep talks one could ask for. I left
his office completely overwhelmed on several occasions—but never without invaluable ideas
about how to improve my project or quotable (and unquotable) pieces of wisdom that I will
never forget. I am also indebted to the members of my dissertation committee: Barbara Fischer,
Heather White, Michael Martone, and Phil Beidler. Thank you for all your help and support
throughout this process.
Thank you to the Graduate Council of the University of Alabama. The Dissertation
Fellowship in the academic year 2009/2010 contributed significantly to my being able to fully
concentrate on this project and complete it in time.
I am eternally grateful to my proofreaders: my dad (equipped with his electronic
translator) and Shelley Akers, who did much more than I could ever have asked for.
Thank you to all my friends: without you I am nothing!
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And finally, much thanks and love to my family (Mom, Dad, Maresa, Fabi, Großmama,
and Großvater) for moral, financial, and all kinds of other support.
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CONTENTS

ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... ii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ......................................................................................................... iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .............................................................................................................. iv
1. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................... 1
a. Maps of Reading .................................................................................................................... 1
b. But wait, there’s more! .......................................................................................................... 7
c. Pynchon’s Novels as Allegories of Critical Reading Practices .............................................. 9
2. 1945-1963: THE READER IN THE IVORY TOWER ............................................................ 14
a. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 14
b. The Street: Television, the G.I. Bill, and the Paperback Explosion ..................................... 16
c. Anxieties ............................................................................................................................... 19
d. The Hothouse: Retreat into the Ivory Tower ....................................................................... 23
e. Readers in Retreat: “The Small Rain” and “Entropy” ......................................................... 28
f. Streets and Hothouses: Pynchon’s V. .................................................................................. 37
g. Outlook ................................................................................................................................. 46
3. 1963-1973: THE PARANOID READER ................................................................................. 49
a. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 49
b. Paranoia ................................................................................................................................ 50
c. The Times They Are a-Changin’ .......................................................................................... 52
d. Paranoid Readers .................................................................................................................. 58
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e. Stencil, Oedipa, and Us ........................................................................................................ 63
f. Stencil and Oedipa as Paranoid Readers ............................................................................... 65
g. Reading V. and The Crying of Lot 49 ................................................................................... 69
h. The Void: Looking Ahead ................................................................................................... 74
4. 1973-1980: READING BETWEEN DOUBT AND HOPE ...................................................... 78
a. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 78
b. Snapshot 1973 ...................................................................................................................... 80
c. Doubt: Loss of Trust and the Doubtful Reader .................................................................... 84
d. Hope: The Me Decade and Reader-response Criticism ....................................................... 91
e. The Slothrop in All of Us ..................................................................................................... 96
f. Slothrop’s Move Beyond the Paranoid Reader ..................................................................... 98
g. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold: Thematic and Structural De-centering ............ 101
h. The Zone: Reading between Doubt and Hope ................................................................... 103
i. Doubtful Readers ................................................................................................................ 105
j. The Rorschach Text: Hope ................................................................................................. 109
k. “You are free. You are free…” .......................................................................................... 113
l. Re-centering ........................................................................................................................ 116
5. 1980-1991: RESISTING READERS. POLITICIZATION AND DEFENSIVE MOVES ..... 118
a. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 118
b. Reagan, Globalization, Multiculturalism, and Technology in the Culture Wars ............... 120
c. Reading in the Academy: Empiricism and Pluralism ........................................................ 127
d. Resisting Readers ............................................................................................................... 132
e. Vineland .............................................................................................................................. 139
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f. Vineland’s America ............................................................................................................ 141
g. Hooked on Television: Viewers, not Readers .................................................................... 145
h. Everybody’s Kung Fu Fighting: Reader-Character Parallels in Vineland ......................... 150
i. Recalibrating Vineland ........................................................................................................ 156
6. 1991 onwards: THE THEORY MESS AND META-READERS .......................................... 160
a. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 160
b. Paving the Way for the Theory Mess ................................................................................. 162
c. The Theory Mess and the Fate of Reading ......................................................................... 166
d. Criticism in the Wilderness: Readers in Mason & Dixon .................................................. 171
e. Mason & Dixon’s “Zone” ................................................................................................... 176
f. Reading Mason & Dixon .................................................................................................... 179
g. Becoming a Meta-Reader ................................................................................................... 184
h. Outlook: Meinel in Map-space ........................................................................................... 187
CONCLUSION: THE END OF READING AS WE KNOW IT? ............................................. 189
a. A Brave New World ........................................................................................................... 189
b. Alarmism: the Death of the Book and Luddite Readers .................................................... 191
c. Iconoclasts: Hooray for Hypertext! ................................................................................... 195
d. Against the Day’s “Zone” .................................................................................................. 199
e. Reading in Against the Day ................................................................................................ 204
f. Bilocated Reading ............................................................................................................... 207
g. Departures .......................................................................................................................... 212
WORKS CITED .......................................................................................................................... 217
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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

a. Maps of Reading
About two thirds into Thomas Pynchon’s 2006 novel Against the Day, two characters
consult “a gigantic ten-miles-to-the-inch wall map of the Balkans” (689). Looking “at
components singly,” warns the owner of the map, Professor Renfrew, is enough to send one
running “about the room screaming after a while.” The best way, advises Renfrew, is to look at it
“all together, everything in a single timeless snapshot” (Pynchon, AtD 689). Considering that its
1085 pages make Against the Day just as gigantic as Renfrew’s map and that the feeling of
wanting to run about the room screaming may be an emotion many first-time readers of Against
the Day find familiar, we should heed Renfrew’s admonition and apply it to our reading of the
novel. Rather than getting lost in the multiple plot lines, hundreds of characters, historical
references, and literary allusions, we should take a step back. Renfrew says:
The railroads seem to be the key. If one keeps looking at the map while walking
slowly backwards across the room, at a certain precise distance the structural
principle leaps into visibility—how the different lines connect, how they do not,
where varying interests may want them to connect, all of this defining patterns of
flow, not only actual but also invisible, potential and such rates of change as how
quickly one’s relevant masses can be moved to a given frontier … and beyond
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