American Postmodernity

This book brings together nine original essays from Pynchon scholars around the world whose work furthers the debate concerning the nature of perceived shifts in the sensibility, style and subject-matter of Pynchon's fiction from The Crying of Lot 49 to Mason & Dixon. Of particular concern is the complex relationship between Pynchon's challenging and evolving uvre and notions of postmodernity which this volume's focus on Pynchon's most recent fiction helps bring up-to-date. Five of the collection's essays examine the writer's achievement in Mason & Dixon and were first presented in 1998 as papers at King's College, London, as part of International Pynchon Week. The volume includes contributions from renowned Pynchon scholars such as David Seed, David Thoreen and Francisco Collado Rodríquez, and offers perspectives on Pynchon's achievement in The Crying of Lot 49, Vineland and Mason & Dixon which view those works in relation to a fascinating variety of subjects such as hybridity, mapmaking and representation, the work of Marshall McLuhan, American comic traditions, metafiction, madness in American fiction, science and ethics. Reconfirmed throughout is the ethical seriousness of a writer who remains one of American literature's most fascinating, important and ever elusive figures.

Autorentext

The Editor: Ian D. Copestake (1969) was born on the Wirral and graduated from Warwick University in 1991 with a BA Hons degree in English and American literature. He completed an M.A. in American Literature at University of Leeds (1992-1993) and later received a Ph.D. at the University of Leeds (1993-2000). His thesis subject was the poetry of William Carlos Williams (twentieth-century American poetry).
He is a research fellow in American literature at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität, Frankfurt. The author of various articles and reviews relating to his interests in contemporary American fiction and twentieth-century poetry, he is also editor of Rigor of Beauty: Essays in Commemoration of William Carlos Williams.

Zusammenfassung
"... the collection is an important contribution to Pynchon studies." (Manfred Kopp, Amerikastudien/American Studies)
"...this perceptive book of essays is a welcome contribution to Pynchon studies, and to the study of contemporary U.S. literature and culture." (Erik S. Roraback, Pynchon Notes)

Inhalt
Contents: Ian D. Copestake: Introduction. Postmodern Reflections: The Image of an Absent Author David Seed: Media System in The Crying of Lot 49 David Dickson: Pynchon's Vineland and «That Fundamental Agreement in What is Good and Proper»: What Happens when we Need to Change it? David Thoreen: In which «Acts Have Consequences»: Ideas of Moral Order in the Qualified Postmodernism of Pynchon's Recent Fiction Francisco Collado Rodríguez: Mason & Dixon, Historiographic Metafiction and the Unstable Reconciliation of Opposites William B. Millard: Delineations of Madness and Science: Mason & Dixon, Pynchonian Space and the Snovian Disjunction Martin Saar/Christian Skirke: «The Realm of Velocity and Spleen»: Reading Hybrid Life in Mason & Dixon John Heon: Surveying the Punch Line: Jokes and their Relation to the American Racial Unconscious/Conscience in Mason & Dixon and the Liner Notes to Spiked! Robert L. McLaughlin: Surveying, Mapmaking and Representation in Mason & Dixon Ian D. Copestake: «Off the Deep End Again»: Sea-Consciousness and Insanity in The Crying of Lot 49 and Mason & Dixon.