Pynchon: A Collection of Critical Essays

Misunderstood and surrounded by literary controversy, Thomas Pynchon remains one of America's most enigmatic and innovative 20th-century novelists. In this collection of critical essays, such authorities as Frank Kermode, Tony Tanner, and Richard Poirer assess Pynchon's literary techniques, fictional characters, and themes and his refusal to dwell on such hallmarks of modern literatures as psychological drama, domestic detail, and interior monologue.Instead, as Edward Mendelson explains in the Introduction, Pynchon opens his fiction to possibilities the modern novel has in recent years ignored by adopting such 'dated' literary techniques as omniscient narration and by developing a social rather than psychological theory of character.Includes:• Frank Kermode, 'Decoding the Trystero'• Joseph Slade, 'Entropy and Other Calamities'• Edward Mendelson, 'The Sacred, the Profane, and The Crying of Lot 49'• Paul Fussell, 'The Brigadier Remembers'• Tony Tanner, 'V. and V-2'• James Nohrnberg, 'Pynchon's Paraclete'