Becoming Pynchon: Genetic Narratology and V.: Theory and Interpretation of Narrative
Autor Luc Herman, John M. Krafften Limba Engleză Hardback – 21 feb 2023
The 1963 publication of Thomas Pynchon’s V. changed the landscape of American fiction. Becoming Pynchon: Genetic Narratology and V. offers a detailed examination of the dramatic transformations that took place as Pynchon’s foundational novel went from typescript to published work. Luc Herman and John M. Krafft develop and deploy a rich theory of genetic narratology to examine the performance of genre in the novel. Pushing back against the current dominance of cognitive narratology, they discuss focalization, character construction, and evocation of consciousness as clues to Pynchon’s developing narratology of historical fiction. Their theoretical interventions offer an important and timely corrective to the field of narratology with a method that brings the author back into the analytical frame. Herman and Krafft use as their guide the typescript of V. that surfaced in 2001, when it was acquired by the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, as well as Pynchon’s editorial correspondence with Corlies Smith, his first editor at J. B. Lippincott. Becoming Pynchon assembles a comprehensive and unequaled picture of Pynchon’s writing process that will appeal both to Pynchonians and to postmodernism scholars more broadly.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780814215357
ISBN-10: 0814215351
Pagini: 190
Ilustrații: 1 table
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 13 mm
Greutate: 0.37 kg
Editura: Ohio State University Press
Colecția Ohio State University Press
Seria Theory and Interpretation of Narrative
ISBN-10: 0814215351
Pagini: 190
Ilustrații: 1 table
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 13 mm
Greutate: 0.37 kg
Editura: Ohio State University Press
Colecția Ohio State University Press
Seria Theory and Interpretation of Narrative
Recenzii
“No one has examined the V. typescript with anything resembling the depth, detail, and keen interpretive eye that Herman and Krafft have here. Unique in the critical landscape, Becoming Pynchon is a first-rate work of scholarship and adds rich textual grounding to a biographical field often driven by anecdote and apocrypha.” —Jeffrey Severs, coeditor of Pynchon’s Against the Day: A Corrupted Pilgrim’s Guide
"Becoming Pynchon is studded with genetic gems that glitter and sparkle, and that will delight and often surprise the reader. … [It] is truly a very timely and immensely important addition to Pynchon scholarship … [and] a joy to read." —Hanjo Berressem, Electronic Book Review
Notă biografică
Luc Herman is Professor of Literature in English and Narrative Theory at the University of Antwerp and coauthor of Gravity’s Rainbow, Domination, and Freedom. John M. Krafft is Professor Emeritus of English at Miami University and was a cofounder and coeditor of Pynchon Notes.
Extras
Not only does the typescript of V. throw light on a number of interpretative difficulties related to the published novel, but more important in view of our project, if we combine the questions above, we see that the typescript also helps us investigate the narratology of historical fiction. While the compound of narratology and history brings to mind Hayden White’s groundbreaking Metahistory (1973), our brief is decidedly different. White used classical narratology to analyze nineteenth-century historiography, whereas we start from a work of fiction about history to consider its various narratological aspects. Our point about the typescript of V. and historical fiction implies the larger claim that genetic narratology can contribute to a grasp of narrative genre in general. To specify and motivate this claim, we want to start from an overall notion of genre before considering Pynchon’s typescript as an illustration of his negotiation with the specific genre of historical fiction.
For the longest time, the study of genre has taken an Aristotelian, taxonomic approach, putting literary texts in boxes with clear dividers between them after having come up with exhaustive lists of the defining characteristics of each box. Following John Frow, and working against such an approach, we think of literary texts as “performances of genre rather than reproductions of a class to which they belong.” A historical novel doesn’t have to feature all the possible characteristics of the genre in order to be thought of as such. From the perspective of narrative production, the performance we have in mind comes down to a set of choices an author makes about narrative elements (including focalization, character construction, and the style of the narrator’s discourse) as they relate to the story events—in the case of V. a specific evocation of twentieth-century history up to 1943 and beyond. Literary interpretations often demonstrate a unity of content and form in the text under scrutiny, meaning that the avant-texte of a novel, which we have acknowledged is itself an interpretation of the genetic dossier, may betray a tendency to present these choices more neatly than they would have appeared to the author. We do not plead immunity to this inclination, but we prefer judicious hesitation to an overly confident reading of the evidence. For instance, if, as we will see, Pynchon’s editor warned him that the text he first submitted in 1961 might have too much of the feel of a “Protest Novel” about it, that does not have to mean the rewritten version of the African American character who prompted this remark testifies to an entirely balanced view of race on the author’s part.
As Frow puts it, genre is also “a framework we impute” to a text, an attribution with a number of consequences for the way we develop or process it. So, if we say that genetic narratology is capable of illuminating genre, it is of course of paramount importance in our case study that the authorial choices made to perform the specific genre now generally attributed to V. were Pynchon’s own. While it wasn’t until 2006, in a letter to The Telegraph on behalf of Ian McEwan, that Pynchon publicly included himself in the ranks of historical novelists, it is clear from the thematization of history in V. that he intended to write a historical novel. Still, this brings up the question of what Pynchon understood about historical fiction at the time he was composing V. Biographical information can help us sketch the beginning of an answer here.
For the longest time, the study of genre has taken an Aristotelian, taxonomic approach, putting literary texts in boxes with clear dividers between them after having come up with exhaustive lists of the defining characteristics of each box. Following John Frow, and working against such an approach, we think of literary texts as “performances of genre rather than reproductions of a class to which they belong.” A historical novel doesn’t have to feature all the possible characteristics of the genre in order to be thought of as such. From the perspective of narrative production, the performance we have in mind comes down to a set of choices an author makes about narrative elements (including focalization, character construction, and the style of the narrator’s discourse) as they relate to the story events—in the case of V. a specific evocation of twentieth-century history up to 1943 and beyond. Literary interpretations often demonstrate a unity of content and form in the text under scrutiny, meaning that the avant-texte of a novel, which we have acknowledged is itself an interpretation of the genetic dossier, may betray a tendency to present these choices more neatly than they would have appeared to the author. We do not plead immunity to this inclination, but we prefer judicious hesitation to an overly confident reading of the evidence. For instance, if, as we will see, Pynchon’s editor warned him that the text he first submitted in 1961 might have too much of the feel of a “Protest Novel” about it, that does not have to mean the rewritten version of the African American character who prompted this remark testifies to an entirely balanced view of race on the author’s part.
As Frow puts it, genre is also “a framework we impute” to a text, an attribution with a number of consequences for the way we develop or process it. So, if we say that genetic narratology is capable of illuminating genre, it is of course of paramount importance in our case study that the authorial choices made to perform the specific genre now generally attributed to V. were Pynchon’s own. While it wasn’t until 2006, in a letter to The Telegraph on behalf of Ian McEwan, that Pynchon publicly included himself in the ranks of historical novelists, it is clear from the thematization of history in V. that he intended to write a historical novel. Still, this brings up the question of what Pynchon understood about historical fiction at the time he was composing V. Biographical information can help us sketch the beginning of an answer here.
Cuprins
Introduction Genetic Narratology, Historical Fiction, and Pynchon’s V. Chapter 1 Fast Learner: From Typescript to Published Novel Chapter 2 Focalization and Historiography in the Egypt Chapter Chapter 3 Dreams and the Evocation of Intersubjective Consciousness in the South-West Africa Chapter Chapter 4 Character Construction 1: Removing the “Millennium” Chapter Chapter 5 Character Construction 2: Canceling the Sitcom Chapter 6 Character Construction 3: Rewriting McClintic Sphere Chapter 7 Missing Link: The V. Galleys at the Morgan Library and the Harry Ransom Center Conclusion Stencilization and Pynchon’s Historical Realism
Descriere
Examines the development of Thomas Pynchon’s foundational novel, V., bringing the author back into the frame of narratology and offering an important corrective to the field.