Thomas Pynchon and American Counterculture

Thomas Pynchon and the American Counterculture employs the revolutionary sixties as a lens through which to view the anarchist politics of Pynchon's novels. Joanna Freer identifies and elucidates Pynchon's commentaries on such groups as the Beats, the New Left and the Black Panther Party and on such movements as the psychedelic movement and the women's movement, drawing out points of critique to build a picture of a complex countercultural sensibility at work in Pynchon's fiction. In emphasising the subtleties of Pynchon's responses to counterculture, Freer clarifies his importance as an intellectually rigorous political philosopher. She further suggests that, like the graffiti in Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon creates texts that are 'revealed in order to be thought about, expanded on, translated into action by the people', his early attraction to core countercultural values growing into a conscious, politically motivated writing project that reaches its most mature expression in Against the Day.

Author: Joanna Freer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 09/01/2016
Pages: 220
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.72lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.50d
ISBN13: 9781107429710
ISBN10: 1107429714
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | American | General