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A good read for book lovers! ... Read more

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This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's large-scale digitization efforts. The Library seeks to preserve the intellectual content of items in a manner that facilitates and promotes a variety of uses. The digital reformatting process results in an electronic version of the original text that can be both accessed online and used to create new print copies. The Library also understands and values the usefulness of print and makes reprints available to the public whenever possible. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found in the HathiTrust, an archive of the digitized collections of many great research libraries. For access to the University of Michigan Library's digital collections, please see http://www.lib.umich.edu and for information about the HathiTrust, please visit http://www.hathitrust.org ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Imbalanced, inessential
This book, Pynchon's earliest published short story, puts on display the traits that will make Pynchon one of the finest English-language writers ever: a free-wheeling imagination; a catholic, encyclopaediac store of knowledge; a troubled morality; and a capacity to be damn funny.

If you've read _V_ or the short story "Entropy", you've seen this setup before: a college party and a protagonist operating within that system.There are very good reasons it was left out of _Slow Learner_: the humor is forced, the ideas aren't fully formed, and the whole thing is an exercise in imperfection.Which is not to say it's meritless -- the protagonist and the plot live in my brain still, two years since I first read it.

It can be found online, however, and even if it couldn't, thirty dollars is a bit steep for a piece like this.If you must get it, get all of his other published fiction first. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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A Review by Dr. Joseph Suglia
"Suppose truth were a woman..."
-Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

All readers undergo a voyage to discover hidden meanings-a voyage which is also a passage of self-discovery. Like most meta-fictional narratives, Thomas Pynchon's first novel, V. (1963) is intensely preoccupied with the act of reading itself and the possibility of self-reading.

Never has reading seemed so lugubrious. The plot concerns Stencil, the son of a now-deceased British foreign officer, who, accompanied by eponymous "schlemihl" Benny Profane, half-heartedly searches for the elusive "V."-who may be a woman, a thing, a concept, a sewer rat, or nothing at all. Stencil is a reader, broadly understood: he attempts to interpret the meaning of an initial. Reading is here a process without progress and without terminus: Stencil never succeeds in identifying the initial's referent. As his name implies, Stencil can only trace the outlines of that which he seeks; his search is, to a certain extent, a fruitless yearning for truth.

To put an end to the process of reading would be to lose one's human spontaneity. For this reason, "V." must never be found. If "V." were found, Stencil would become indistinguishable from an inanimate object. The search for "V." is the only thing that distinguishes him from a thing: "His random movements before the war had given way to a great single movement from inertness to-if not vitality, then at least activity" [55]. Both Profane and Stencil are terrified of the world of objects. They fear its stasis, its contagious inanimateness. The inanimate objects that populate Pynchon's narrative often resemble human beings, such as the beer tap that is shaped in the form of a "foam rubber breast" [16]. Human beings, conversely, are themselves often functional and machinelike: eg., Benny Profane's jaunts resemble the idiotic up-and-down movements of a yo-yo; Rachel's words are described as "inanimate-words [Profane] couldn't really talk back at" [27], etc. All of the "characters" in the novel are threatened by the lifeless world of things. Stencil needs to search for the inaccessible in order to separate himself from the inanimateness of objecthood, in order to avoid freezing into a thingly state: "He tried not to think, therefore, about any end to the search. Approach and avoid" [55]. If "V" were found, it would be necessary to lose it again and reinitiate the search.

Readers are implicated in this impossible quest, involuntarily placed in the position of code-breakers. Like Stencil, they obsessively ask themselves, "Who, then, is V.?" Because the identity of "V." is never completely given, the solution to the code seems to withdraw abyssally into darkness. Without an answerable meaning, the "alien hieroglyphic[-]" [17] seems to exist on its own terms. The book's center, it would seem, is not some intentional content that would lie behind or beyond the code, but, rather, the code itself. The cipher itself is illuminated, not its meaning. The point of interpretation is no longer to identify a transcendental meaning or theme, but rather to sift through the fragments and details of the narrative, the ill-fitting pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The unanswerable question, "Who, then, is V.?" incites us to return to the forgotten or neglected world of appearances. Bluntly stated, the disconnected pieces of Pynchon's narrative are what is essential, not the "whole" to which they would belong.

Pynchon's novel is an anti-adventure story about the plight of reading. It challenges us to interpret something-the initial "V."-without thinking in terms of a whole: the particular clues in the story do not relate to the context of the universal. Any interpretation that thinks in terms of the universal, in this context, is doomed to failure. V. concerns the failure of reading and self-reading. Stencil's obsessive yet ultimately grim and joyless quest is to discover his own provenance (the search for "V." is, to a certain extent, the search for his own father, der Vater in German) and therefore to discover his own identity. And yet there is no definitive conclusion to the process of self-reading; therefore, there is no definite self-understanding. Stencil's identity is determined by the impossible which he seeks: "[H]e was quite purely He Who Looks for V." [225]. If this process had any finality, he would be nothing at all-that is to say, nothing more than a thing, one thing among others.

The task of reading, then, must remain an infinitely provisional task. Brenda remarks to Profane in Malta: "`You've had all these fabulous experiences. I wish mine would show me something.'/`Why.'/`The experience, the experience. Haven't you learned?'/Profane didn't have to think long. `No,' he said, `offhand I'd say I haven't learned a goddamn thing.'" [454]. Stencil and Profane are led on an issueless quest-as are those of us who follow them. The absence of anything like a decipherable meaning forces us to think about why we read: the book reveals our desire to discover order in chaos, to impose structure and coherence on entropy, to implement systems where there is none.

According to the metaphorics of V., the search for meaning is more vital than the meaning that is sought. Such is the significance of the non-questions that populate the book-questions that are unshelled of the interrogative form: "What are you afraid of" [36]; "Do you like it here" [40], etc. These questions without questions remind us that, when approaching this book, we must pose questions without hankering after results. The question is its own answer.

Dr. Joseph Suglia ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Incredibly useful
As anyone that reads Pynchon novels can tell you, trying to get at all of the different potential readings of his novels can be downright difficult. If you snooze your way through a couple pages, you invariably are going to miss some of the sub-plots, or even keys to one of the on-going plots. Every novel of his that I finish, makes me realize that I need to go back and read with a different eye towards the actions and events of the text. To me, this is the mark of a great artist - enjoyable and rewarding every time, with something new to offer upon each successive return.

This companion collection of literary criticism regarding "Mason and Dixon", with contributions by some of the preeminent scholars on Pynchon, doubtless increased my enjoyment of the book several-fold on my first time through it. For that, even given the steep price, I have to heartily recommend this title. Since the novel itself takes over much of your life for an extended period of time, you may as well assign an appropriate level of importance to it and go for the highest level of comprehension that you can.

I know with absolute certainy that when I go back for a second read of "Mason & Dixon," that this book will be my map towards a more detailed reading.

Here are a list of the papers included:

"Foreshadowing the Text," Irving Malin

"Mason & Dixon in the Zone, or, A Brief Poetics of Pynchon-Space," Brian McHale

"'Cranks of Ev'ry Radius': Romancing the Line in 'Mason & Dixon'," Arthur Saltzman

"Thomas Pynchon and the Fault Lines of America," Donald J. Greiner

"Mapping the Course of Empire in the New World," David Seed

"Dimming the Enlightenment: Thomas Pynchon's 'Mason & Dixon'," Victor Strandberg

"The Sound of One Man Mapping: Wicks Cherrycoke and the Eastern (Re)solution," Joseph Dewey

"Reading at the 'Crease of Credulity'," Bernard Duyfhuizen

"Historical Documents Relating to 'Mason & Dixon',"David Foreman

"Plucking the American Albatross: Pynchon's Irrealism in 'Mason & Dixon'," Jeff Baker

"Plot, Ideology, and Compassion in 'Mason & Dixon'," Thomas H. Schaub

"'Mason & Dixon' Bibliography," Clifford S. Mead ... Read more

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"Pynchon's Poetics" is a provocative, intelligent analysis of "V.", "The Crying of Lot 49", "Gravity's Rainbow", and "Vineland". Hanjo Berrssem examines these works in the light of poststructuralist thought and literary theory, investigating the notion of subjectivity and the relations between the subject, culture, and language. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Lacan, Deleuze and Pynchon
I'm a huge Pynchon fan, and know little of Lacan or Deleuze.
This book applies French theory to Pynchon's text. It also gives
introductions to Lacan and Deleuze.So I'm finding it very helpful and
interesting.It's not an easy read, but if this is the sort of thing
you like, you will like this book.(-;

Adequate assimilation of theory and text.
Only recommended to hardcore theorists and devoted Pynchonites (if those two titles can possibly coincide).Although I don't find the theory particuarly engaging, someone may.............this book is for you, but not me.Berressem is thorough in his evaluation, and the book isn't a difficult read.Overall, a mild recommendation. ... Read more

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Eight essays on the ultimate temptations of humankind include Thomas Pynchon on Sloth, John Updike on Lust, Gore Vidal on Pride, A. S. Byatt on Envy, and Joyce Carol Oates on Despair. Reprint. LJ. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Lightweight
This book is a collection of eight essays. The first seven are each written on the subject of one of the "deadly" sins of sloth, anger, lust, gluttony, pride, avarice and envy. The eight is on despair. Each of the famous authors ruminates on the sin, looking at it from his or her unique perspective.

Overall I found the essays well written, and the book to be easy to read. This book makes for some lightweight reading, short and simple, but without much substance. Overall, I don't recommend it.

Pynchon, Gordon, Updile, Vidal, Trevor, Howard, Byatt, Oates
Eight essays on Sloth, Anger, Lust, Gluttony, Pride, Avarice, Envy, and Despair (yes that's 8 sins).To be honest I bought it because of Pynchon, (whose essay -if you are even a slight fan- makes the buy worth it) butread on to the back cover.I quickly discovered that these authorscompiled around the topic of sins is a great way to see inside thesewriters styles and appraoch to a similar idea.Some I'd read before, andothers introduced themselves in this novel.All were unique andinteresting in their own right, especially for someone -me- who isn'tterribly interested in sins.Highly reccomended! ... Read more

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Out of Touch investigates how skin has become acrucial but disavowed figure in twentieth-century literature, theory and cultural criticism. These discourses reveal the extent to which skin likewise figures in the emergence of visual technologies positioned at the heart of the contest between surface depth and, by extension, between Western globalization and identity politics. Skin itself comes into explicit focus, though, only after a half-century of alternatingcirculation and suppression in American discourses about 'colour-blindness,' during which time colonialism elsewhere had begun to lose its purchase. Skin emerges most spectacularly at the close of this century in body modification practices - especially tattoo - that link visuality to writing and embodiment, urging complex identity politics that hedge against globalization. Nevertheless, even as interventions on theskin characterize the millennial turn, fantasy and science fiction literature and film trumpet skin's passing in the cybernetic age. Similarly feminist theory - otherwise concerned with corporeality - calls for abandoning the skin as a hostile boundary.Out of Touch produces a genealogy by which we can discern the implications of just such myriad tensions skin poses in novels as distinctive as Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway , Ellison's Invisible Man , Pynchon's Gravity Rainbow andAcker's Empire of the Senseless . ... Read more

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Charles Clerc's "Mason & Dixon & Pynchon" is the first book-length critical study of Thomas Pynchon's latest novel. Clerc's study approaches the novel from a variety of perspectives, including historical and literary. Substantial attention is paid to the historical time period of Mason & Dixon. A survey of over 50 critical responses to the book and excerpts from the journal of Mason and Dixon are also included. ... Read more

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Critics who hold that postmodernist art is essentially non-adversarial and apolitical, Paul Maltby contends, have ignored the historical context of the postmodern focus on problems of language. In "Dissident Postmodernists", Maltby examines a major current of postmodernist fiction that can be read as a dissident response to developments of late capitalism that have transformed the field of language and communications. Among Maltby's models of dissident postmodernist writings are "Gravity's Rainbow", "The Public Burning", "Snow White" and more recent publications like "Vineland" and "Spanking the Maid". In a series of readings, he examines the ways in which these works respond to the erosion of the public sphere, the elevation of functionalist discourse, the enlargement of the state propaganda network, the corporate management of mass communications, and the diffusion of concept-poor language forms which limit social understanding. Alert to such developments, Maltby argues, dissident postmodernists such as Barthelme, Coover and Pynchon write with politicized perceptions of language and a heightened awareness of language as a medium of social integration. ... Read more