Lines of Flight

Mattessich Stefan Mattessich

Description

For Thomas Pynchon, the characteristic features of late capitalism-the rise of the military-industrial complex, consumerism, bureaucratization and specialization in the workplace, standardization at all levels of social life, and the growing influence of the mass media-all point to a transformation in the way human beings experience time and duration. Focusing on Pynchon's novels as representative artifacts of the postwar period, Stefan Mattessich analyzes this temporal transformation in relation not only to Pynchon's work but also to its literary, cultural, and theoretical contexts.Mattessich theorizes a new kind of time-subjective displacement-dramatized in the parody, satire, and farce deployed through Pynchon's oeuvre. In particular, he is interested in showing how this sense of time relates to the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. Examining this movement as an instance of flight or escape and exposing the beliefs behind it, Mattessich argues that the counterculture's rejection of the dominant culture ultimately became an act of self-cancellation, a rebellion in which the counterculture found itself defined by the very order it sought to escape. He points to parallels in Pynchon's attempts to dramatize and enact a similar experience of time in the doubling-back, crisscrossing, and erasure of his writing. Mattessich lays out a theory of cultural production centered on the ethical necessity of grasping one's own susceptibility to discursive forms of determination.

Sujets

• USA
• Inglés estadounidense
• Social theory
• American English
• États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 22 novembre 2002
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822384137
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

L I N E S O F F L I G H T

P O S T - C O N T E M P O R A R Y I N T E R V E N T I O N S

S E R I E S E D I T O R S :

S T A N L E Y F I S H A N D F R E D R I C J A M E S O N

L I N E S O F F L I G H T

Discursive Time and Countercultural Desire

in the Work of Thomas Pynchon

Stefan Mattessich

Duke University Press

Durham and London 2002

∫2002 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$ Typeset in Quadraat by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. An earlier version of chapter 1 first appeared in the journal ELH65 (1998), and an earlier version of chapter 2 first appeared inPostmodern Culture8, no. 2 (May 1998). Chapter 7 is a considerably reworked piece based on a review-essay published inPostmodern Culture8, no. 1 (September 1997).

To Thomas A. Vogler and Hayden White

C O N T E N T S

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Introduction

1

Imperium, Misogyny, and Postmodern Parody inV.

Ekphrasis, Escape, and Countercultural Desire in The Crying of Lot 4943

Turning Around the Origin inGravity’s Rainbow: Parody, Preterition, Paranoia, and Other Polymera

23

70

A Close Reading of Part 1, Episode 19, ofGravity’s Rainbow

Docile Bodies and the Body without Organs: Gravity’sGravity’s Rainbow133

95

Totality and the Repetition of Di√erence: Rereading the 1960s inVineland207

A Vigilant Folly: Lines of Flight inMason & Dixon

231

Conclusion: Toward a Theory of the Counterculture

Notes

255

Works Cited

Index

289

285

246

L I N E S O F F L I G H T