Bloom's Modern Critical Views - Thomas Pynchon (2003) (331p) [Inua].pdf

Title: Thomas Pynchon (Bloom's Modern Critical Views)
Editor: Harold Bloom
Series: Bloom's Modern Critical Views
Hardcover: 322 pages
Publisher: Chelsea House Pub (L) (May 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0791074455
ISBN-13: 978-0791074459

Description:
A collection of critical essays discuss the works of the American novelist.

Editor’s Note
My Introduction concerns Gravity’s Rainbow, with particular emphasis upon “The Story of Byron the Bulb.”
Edward Mendelson traces what he considers the interplay of sacred and profane in The Crying of Lot 49.
To Richard Poirier, Pynchon is a great novelist of betrayal, heir of Melville and Hawthorne.
George Levine comments on Pynchon’s “sado-anarchism” and its effect of disorienting us.
Catharine R. Stimpson examines the equivocal role of women as apocalyptic figures in Pynchon.
Analyzing allegorical language in Pynchon, Maureen Quilligan observes that every reader becomes her or his own allegorist.
The early story, “Entropy,” is seen by David Seed as an inverted allegory of order.
Kathryn Hume bravely attempts to unravel some of Pynchon’s complex mythographies.
The large question of what “paranoia” means in Pynchon is explored by Leo Bersani.
Dwight Eddins examines Pynchon’s Gnosticism in his early stories.
V., a reader’s delight, is read by John Dugdale in terms of its prevalent ambivalences, while Vineland, the weakest of Pynchon’s works, receives a rescue operation from N. Katherine Hayles.
Bernard Duyfhuizen returns us to The Crying of Lot 49, to examine its creative disruptions.
The remaining essays deal with Pynchon’s late masterpiece, Mason & Dixon.
Michael Wood subtly praises Mason & Dixon for balancing completion and the truth of disorder, after which David Cowart sees Pynchon as embracing a limited idea of order. Finally, Thomas H. Schaub refreshingly expresses the element of compassion in Mason & Dixon.