Customer Reviews (1)

A nice find
This book is helpful for people like me, who aren't searching for really deep and complex meanings in Pynchon's novels.This manages to not only demystify some of the complexities, it also helps to simply add somestructure to the novels. The chapter on V was particularily helpful in justfinding out what was going on, especially with Stencil's eightimpersonations.A good place to start for those wondering more aboutPynchon's novels... ... Read more

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This study argues that the often-noted resistance to interpretation by these authors' experimental fiction has to do with the radical functioning of metaphor in their texts. After an introductory discussion about the contemporary debates about metaphor and narrative, each author's work is examined in various theoretical contexts such as cognitivist models, deconstruction, modernism and post-modernism, concentrating on a number of narrative strategies which are grouped under the term piracy. The conclusion situates the metaphoric narrative in relation to the competing literary critical paradigms of postmodernist fiction. ... Read more

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The investigation studies Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon as a novel that comes to giveness in terms of three strata of manifestation: the arty, the rhizomatic, and the acosmic. Utilizing a affective turn implemented within the phenomenological movement by Michael Henry, the study proposes that alongside a rhizomatic mode of accessibility promoting transcendence, Mason & Dixon manifests a withholding of transcendence.

The study investigates the manifestation of this ontological withholding by carrying out the phenomenological reduction established by Edmund Husserl, and by elucidating the phenomenon of immanence in the literary text by means of a theory of auto-affection rooted in - but not reducible to - such methodological reduction. The study proposes that the thematization of anomaly in Mason & Dixon may be unconstructed by means of phenomenological moves that uncover strata of phenomenalization that are not apparent on a thematic or merely playful level. These strata, with their promotion of immanence at the expense of transcendence, are found to be complexly affective in nature. The affectivity governing the withholding of transcendence in these strata is discovered to be instrumental in the work's critique of colonial modes of spatialization, of logocentric modes of transcendence, and of post-Nietzschean modes of affective mastery.

Mason & Dixon discloses a tension between a mode of anomaly that is part of a normal/anomalous dichotomy and a mode of anomaly that is doubly anomalous. Manifested as a nonspatial zone, the doubly anomalous becomes manifested on the hither side of oppositional structures in the novel, such as truth/untruth. The doubly anomalous in Mason & Dixon is identified as an "acosmic" zone of affectivity in which mastering intellectualizations fall short of their telos. Insofar as the "acosmic" occurs within logocentric cartography, it implies an unsettling of every horizontal subject, of nature as the property of man, and of freeplay as the medium of will to power. ... Read more

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In a monumental effort to make Pynchon's work more accessible, Thomas Moore surveys all the major and often confusing backgrounds in Gravity's Rainbow - to help Pynchon's reader understand the weird, frightening, funny, lyrical, surreal and ultimately hopeful cosmos of Pynchon's fiction. Moore illustrates how "Gravity's Rainbow" remains movingly humane, as its author, the agonized mediator of a bewildering field of cultural information, remains excruciatingly sensitive to every human image and gesture, searching for the chances for love and connection that still hide in the vast design of things.(Taken from the inner jacket sleeves of Thomas Moore's "The Style of Connectedness - Gravity's Rainbow and Thomas Pynchon") ... Read more

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In his first three novels, Thomas Pynchon focuses in part on the inability to achieve reliable knowledge of the self and the world. As a consequence of this and of the events around which Pynchon builds these early novels, V., The Crying of Lot 49, and Gravity's Rainbow tend to be read as nihilistic. This book focuses on Pynchon's use of ideas of western history, philosophy, and science to arrive at a reading that suggests that Pynchon's project in these early novels is to provoke his readers into taking precisely the sort of personal and political action his characters cannot. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Excellent!
Alan Brownlie book or volume, Subjectivity and Problems of Knowing, is Excellent! I agreed with the two other gentlemen, this book is a MUST if you are a serious student of Thomas Pynchon. This book is a worthy addition to any library.
WOW, meaning a knockout; hit; great achievement and masterstroke.

This book is a masterstroke!

Put the book down and get a life!
A WOW book! Come on U guys! Grant it, Alan did a good job... but a WOW book? No way! If this book makes you say WOW... (Sigh) Guys, then you need to get a life! Put the book down and go out and smell the roses. Life is waiting for you.
A book like this shouldn't make you say, wow with capital letters, "life" should.

I agree with Helena..."not a WOW book."

baby, you are so money
I have to agree with Mr. Weinberg's review of this volume.
As a serious student of both Pynchon and the philosophy of science, I feel Mr Brownlie's book is a breath of fresh air. Rarely have I encountered a writer with such breadth of knowledge combined with the courage to take on established views.

One person opinion
This is not a "WOW" book. It is one man (Alan W. Brownlie) opinion of Thomas Pynchon books. But then again that is my opinion.

A must-have for the serious student of Pynchon!
WOW! Never before has so much intellectual horsepower been applied towards the study of the works of Thomas Pynchon. Without doubt this volume should be a given in the library of anyone who wishes to learn anything about the subject, and is a must for those purporting to know everything. Alan Brownlie provides thoughtful and comprehensive insight into issues not typically addressed, even as he shines new light onto topics usually glossed over by others. Don't ask why - just buy this book for your library. There's NOTHING else like it on the market! ... Read more

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The appearance of Vineland, his first novel in seventeen years, has rekindled critical debate on Thomas Pynchon. Written before the publication of the new novel, but remarkably prescient about its themes, The Gnostic Pynchon is a provocative reading of Pynchon's work.

Where most critics find in Thomas Pynchon a postmodern writer of indeterministic, relativistic, contingent fiction, Dwight Eddins also finds a man on a religious quest. Pynchon's quest, Eddins shows, is for some principle of organic order that will provide an alternative to hopeless ambiguity, or an equally hopeless choice between total chaos and total control.

The Gnostic Pynchon is a profoundly revisionist view of one of this century's most important writers.

Customer Reviews (1)

Un très Grand Roman post-moderne Américain!
V. est d'abord un immense délire de génie. Deux identités entrecroisées, deux facette d'un même cerveau, Profane & Stencil, mènent, chacune à leur manière, la quête d'un invisible rêve, un impossible tiers, point de fuite rempli de promesses... V. L'un dans l'errance spontanée (espace), l'autre dans la recherche assidue (temps) : deux pôles, deux paraboles qui, inévitablement, promettent un croisement retentissant, puisqu'il s'agit peut-être là de la clé de voûte de la vaste Réalité. Bien sûr, l'explosion de génie se trouve dans le cerveau de chaque lecteur, puisqu'il faut s'y mettre doublement pour élucider (mais est-ce seulement possible?) cette immense énigme qu'est V. Une fresque post-moderne qui se lit et relit avec un plaisir décuplé tant les détails foisonnent et permettent des degrés d'interprétation quasi infinis. Pour qui aime une littérature cérébrale et délirante, tels Ulysse de Joyce ou, dans un autre registre, Mille-plateaux de Deleuze, V. comblera amplement toute les attentes d'un lecteur exigent.

V. n'est peut-être pas le meilleur roman de Thomas Pynchon et un lecteur peu habitué à ce genre de littérature expérimentale risque d'y laisser quelques plumes. Il est conseillé à tout néophyte pynchonnien de commencer par le roman Vente à la criée du lot 49, plus accessible puisque suivant une intrigue beaucoup plus linéaire. Toutefois, V. est un roman davantage satisfaisant et compréhensible dans sa trame elle-même.

* Il est à noter que V. est à la fois un roman et un recueil de nouvelles. C'est-à-dire que le récit principal, celui de Benny Profane, traverse le livre en ligne droite tandis que le récit mettant en scène Stencil est plutôt un prétexte à la lecture de nouvelles toutes différentes, à la fois dans le style et le sujet (on ne s'étonnera donc pas de retrouver dans certains récits des clins d'œil à une certaine littérature, comme celle de Julien Gracq ou Faulkner par exemple et bien d'autres), nouvelles, donc, qui forment toutes autant de courbes dressées dans l'axe du Temps. Car n'oublions pas qu'il s'agit ici de découvrir ce qui se cache réellement derrière la mystérieuse lettre V. ... Read more

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Working from the premise that the Puritan construction of America as a return to Eden endures into American literature of the 20th century, Medoro focuses on the rhetoric of cyclical regeneration, blood, and damnation that accompanies this construction. She argues that a semiotics of menstruation infuses this rhetoric and informs the figuration of a feminine America in the nation's literary tradition: America, as a New World Eden, is haunted not only by the Fall, but also by the "Curse of Eve." The book examines how 9 novels by Pynchon, Faulkner, and Morrison link variations on the figure of the menstruating woman to the bloody history of the United States and to a vision of the nation's redemptive promise. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Bloody Good Read!
I usually just read suspense/thrillers, so when my brother recommended "The Bleeding of America: Menstruation as Symbolic Economy in Pynchon, Faulker, and Morrison" I was skeptical. Boy was I wrong!

I read this totally riveting page-turner in one sitting, and you will too. I don't know the first thing about Pynchon, and I only know Morrison's early work with the Doors -- and I still couldn't wait to read every word of Medoro's masterpiece of the genre. The twists and turns are totally mind-blowing.

My only complaint (Spoiler Alert!) is that this otherwise awesome read ended with a cliffhanger; we never do get to find out the menstruation symbolism in Faulkner's unpublished poetry. Well, Ms. Medoro, five years after the book's release and I'm still waiting!

All I can say is, Now That's Reaching
I guess they're running out of dissertation ideas in college? ... Read more