Expanding the Kingdom of Death: Paradigms of Perception and Space in Works of Thomas Pynchon
Keywords:
Thomas Pynchon, postmodern American fiction, narrative technique, literary space, Gravity´s Rainbow, Against the Day, Mason & DixonAbstract
Thomas Pynchon’s works have been identified as prime examples of postmodern American prose fiction. As such, their language, narrative techniques and content, often dissonant with employed genres, have been labeled as postmodern in their dismissal of any reliable authorial message. This article argues that while Pynchon’s novels mirror paradigms of thought and of a perception of reality, they also show a consistency in re-presenting literary and geographic space, as well as history as narrative. Using three of Pynchon’s novels, the article concludes that an authorial message can be discerned both in the change and in the consistency: a message of the need for humane interaction quite different from stereotypes of the cynicism of postmodernism.
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