Lines of Flight - Discursive Time and Countercultural Desire in the Work of Thomas Pynchon

"Lines of Flight" is an impressive achievement, reminiscent of the work of Fredric Jameson in its engagement with social and political issues, its sensitivity to questions of the ideology of form, and the authority with which it parses complex problems of textuality and discourse and identifies their cultural significance. Pynchon has not had so sympathetic a reader."--Hayden White, Stanford University

List of contents

Introduction
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1. Imperium, Misogyny, and Postmodern Parody in V.

2. Ekphrasis, Escape, and Countercultural Desire in The Crying of Lot 49

3. Turning Around the Origin in Gravity’s Rainbow: Parody, Preterition, Paranoia, and Other Polymera

4. A Close Reading of Part I, Episode 19, of Gravity’s Rainbow

5. Docile Bodies and the Body without Organs: Gravity’s Gravity’s Rainbow

6. Totality and the Repetition of Difference: Rereading the 1960s in Vineland

7. A Vigilant Folly: Lines of Flight in Mason & Dixon

Conclusion: Toward a Theory of Counterculture

Notes

Works Cited

Index

About the author

Stefan Mattessich

Summary

For Thomas Pynchon, the characteristic features of late capitalism point to a transformation in the way human beings experience time and duration. This book analyzes this temporal transformation in relation not only to Pynchon's work but also to its literary, cultural, and theoretical context.

Product details

• Authors: Mattessich, Stefan Mattessich
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 22.11.2002
• EAN: 9780822329794
• ISBN: 978-0-8223-2979-4
• No. of pages: 304
• Dimensions: 153 mm x 247 mm x 27 mm
• Weight: 626 g
• Series: Post-Contemporary Interventions; Post-Contemporary Intervention; Post-Contemporary Interventions; Post-Contemporary Intervention
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Amerika, LITERARY CRITICISM / Semiotics & Theory, Literature - Classics / Criticism, LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General