The Importance of Thomas Pynchon

Poirier, Richard

doi:10.2307/440705

Cited by 16 publications

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“…For Slothrop, psychology “directs our perceptions and feelings whether we know it or not” by defining what counts as rational and what counts as irrational and paranoid (Poirier, “Importance” 157). In Superfolks , Indigo encounters a psychologist who attempts this brand of control, refusing to accept the premise that Indigo is who he says he is and who hypothesizing instead that Indigo has a “superiority complex” or a “superhero fixation” (158).…”

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confidence: 99%

Failure to Launch: Not‐So‐Superheroes in Gravity's Rainbow and Superfolks

Condis¹

2012

The J of Popular Culture

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confidence: 99%

Failure to Launch: Not‐So‐Superheroes in Gravity's Rainbow and Superfolks

Condis¹

2012

The J of Popular Culture

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“…2 2 According to Richard Poirier, Gravity’s Rainbow is aware of the fact “that science directs our perceptions and feelings whether we know it or not, even while, as literary people, we may like to imagine that it is literature that most effectively conditions how we feel” (Poirier 1976, 23). …”

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Thomas Pynchon: Gravity’s Rainbow. The Ideas of the Opposite

Paz¹

2009

Orbis Litterarum

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Thomas Pynchon’s highly complex novel deals with the personal and social difficulty of accepting a new worldview. Set at the end of World War II and in its aftermath, the protagonists find themselves at the crossroads between Newtonian mechanics, epitomized by the V2 rockets, and the foreshadowed atom bomb, which is based on the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. The style of Gravity’s Rainbow resembles the scene of a subatomic world: it is presented as an ever‐changing kaleidoscope of characters, places, events and interactions, which are constantly redetermined in relation to each other in an unpredictable manner. Pynchon manages to create a unifying theme by making all the twists in the plot comprehensible as manifestations of the underlying attempt to reconstruct selfhood. In addition, he refers recurrently to the motif of light, both as a physical entity at the center of modern physics and as a literary symbol of classical stability. In the end, his main protagonist himself turns into a mysterious source of light.

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The Fictional Labyrinths of Thomas Pynchon

Seed¹

1988

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The Importance of Thomas Pynchon

Cited by 16 publications

References 0 publications

Failure to Launch: Not‐So‐Superheroes in Gravity's Rainbow and Superfolks

Failure to Launch: Not‐So‐Superheroes in Gravity's Rainbow and Superfolks

Thomas Pynchon: Gravity’s Rainbow. The Ideas of the Opposite

The Fictional Labyrinths of Thomas Pynchon

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