Thomas Pynchon and the Posthuman Gothic Gregory Stephen

“Falling Away from What Is Human:” Thomas Pynchon and the Posthuman Gothic Gregory Stephen Marks Bachelor of Arts (Honours), La Trobe University A thesis submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Humanities and Social Sciences College of Arts, Social Science and Commerce La Trobe University Victoria, Australia October 2020 Table of Contents Table of figures 3 Abbreviations 3 Abstract 4 Statement of Authorship 5 Acknowledgements 6 Introduction — Toward a Posthuman Gothic Pynchon 7 Chapter One — “The darkest, slowest hours:” Oedipa as Gothic Heroine and the Aesthetics of Terror in The Crying of Lot 49 34 Chapter Two — “No wonder you were replaced:” The Abhuman Horrors of the Masculine Gothic in The Crying of Lot 49 84 Chapter Three — Denying the Machine: Luddites, Monsters, and Pynchon’s Gothic Theory of Literature 127 Chapter Four — A Vector of Desire: Ecogothic Scenes and Spatial Machines in Mason & Dixon 160 Chapter Five — Outside of Time: The Gothic Folds of Time in Mason & Dixon 203 Chapter Six — “Down, down, and gone:” Bleeding Edge’s Ambivalent Cybergothic 242 Conclusion — The Gothic Sublime, or, the Unspeakable 286 Bibliography 305 2 Table of Figures 1. A semiotic square mapping the relations between the key terms of Pynchon's “Luddite” essay. 146 2. Piranesi, Giovanni Battista. The Gothic Arch. c. 1749-58. Etching. 41.0 × 54.0 cm. Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria. https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/work/28341/. 176 Abbreviations ATD Against the Day. London: Vintage, 2007. BE Bleeding Edge. London: Jonathan Cape, 2013. GR Gravity’s Rainbow. New York: Penguin, 2006. HEV “The Heart’s Eternal Vow.” The New York Times Book Review, April 10, 1988. https://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/10/books/the-heart-s-eternal-vow.html. IV Inherent Vice. London: Vintage, 2010. MD Mason & Dixon. London: Vintage, 1998. NMC “The Deadly Sins/Sloth; Nearer, My Couch, to Thee” The New York Times Book Review, June 6, 1993. http://movies2.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-sloth.html. OK “Is It O.K. To Be A Luddite?” The New York Times Book Review, October 28, 1984. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon- luddite.html. SJ Introduction to Stone Junction, by Jim Dodge. New York: Grove, 1998. TCL The Crying of Lot 49. London: Vintage, 1996. V V. London: Vintage, 2000. VL Vineland. London: Vintage, 2000. 3 Abstract Long recognised as one of the preeminent writers of literary postmodernism, Thomas Pynchon’s reputation appears set in stone. Yet, I argue, beneath the postmodern appearance of Pynchon’s writing lies a much older form: the Gothic. This thesis contends that Pynchon participates in several broad conventions of the Gothic genre by way of his dramatisation of anxieties surrounding the place of humanity and rationality within inhuman environments. This reading of Pynchon’s Gothicism places his work within the contemporary subgenre of the posthuman Gothic, primarily due to his preoccupation with humanity’s integration into machines, and also by way of the accompanying concerns with the loss of bodily integrity, psychological autonomy, and spiritual agency. By examining Pynchon as a specifically posthuman Gothic writer I wish to show that the course of human history imagined in his novel does not lead solely to apocalypse or extinction—as critical commentary on his early fiction tends to suggest—but toward a transformation of humanity by its technical and ecological surroundings. Beyond this re- reading of Pynchon’s work, this thesis also attempts to theorise the posthuman Gothic as being more than simply a rehashing of Gothic tropes with sputtering robots instead of cackling villains: in short, I suggest that the structural anxieties of the inside and outside identified by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick as hallmarks of the Gothic are isomorphic to the structures of the posthuman subject which is similarly invaded and confined by its environments. From within this framework of the posthuman and the Gothic, I argue that Pynchon’s various aesthetic and political commitments may be drawn into focus, as the seemingly archaic forms of the Gothic re-emerge once again to name an emerging posthumanity haunted by its recent human past while descending into a monstrous future. 4 Statement of authorship Except where reference is made in the text of the thesis, this thesis contains no material published elsewhere or extracted in whole or in part from a thesis accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma. No other person's work has been used without due acknowledgment in the main text of the thesis. This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other tertiary institution. This work was supported by a La Trobe University Postgraduate Research Scholarship, an Australian Postgraduate Award, and an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. Signed: Gregory Marks 21 September 2020 5 Acknowledgements I would like to give my deepest thanks to my supervisors, Dr. Claire Knowles, Professor Susan Martin, and Associate Professor Christopher Palmer, for the thought and time they spent going over my work, and the patience they had with a project so liable to change from one year to the next. That this text exists in any form is thanks to their tireless support. To Dr. Sofia Ahlberg, as well, I would like to express my gratitude for her work supervising the first half of my candidature. Without her encouragement, I never would have begun. Additionally, I wish to thank La Trobe University, its staff, and its students, for the many years of learning, from one side of the classroom or the other. Funding was generously provided by the Australian Postgraduate Award. To the innumerable interlocutors, collaborators, and conspirators—both online and offline—to whom I owe so much of my intellectual development. To the Cultural Enquiry Research Group, the Society for the Propagation of Libidinal Materialism, the Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy, Library Genesis, and the Artists, Architects, and Activists Reading Group. This work is theirs, too. Not least, I would like to thank my family for their immeasurable support; I cannot express how much I owe to them. To my partner, Lydia, for keeping me sane throughout it all. To Daniel, whose conversations and creations are a constant source of inspiration. To my father, Andrew, for encouraging my love of books for as long as I can remember. And most of all, to my mother, Kathryn, who was there when I practiced my first conference paper, when I drafted my first essay, and when I first took a pencil in hand. My gratitude exceeds words. 6 Introduction Toward a Posthuman Gothic Pynchon The process repeats itself: across five decades and eight novels, Thomas Pynchon repeats variations on a theme. In V. a woman is dispersed across space and time, rendered a cyborg ghost of geopolitical spasms. In The Crying of Lot 49 another woman sees her ex- lover’s face emerge from the floating trash of the city streets and hears the cries of untold millions echoing through the telephone wires overhead. The ostensible protagonist of Gravity’s Rainbow is taken over by a system of desire, and made a machine from the inside out. At the birth of modernity, the titular surveyors of Mason & Dixon discover the genesis of that great, hideous machine in the captive dreams of a continent. In Vineland, gods emerge out of the blips of data that represent human life and death, while in Bleeding Edge the ghosts of humanity glitch from the other side into our alternate realities. In each novel we discover variations on the theme of dissolution: people fragmented by mechanisms of control; bodies integrated into nightmarish circuitries; minds melted into flows of desire; and humanity itself incorporated into the vast inhuman machineries with which it has surrounded itself. The central figure of this book, as it is with all of Pynchon’s novels, is the disordered remnant of humanity. This figure finds many different forms throughout Pynchon’s oeuvre, ranging from the lonely drifters of a mechanised society to the displaced masses who seek refuge somewhere beyond, and from the mangled bodies made part-machine, to the panicked explorers of an earth which refuses to be encompassed by a global machine. Pynchon’s preoccupations range over the gamut of contemporary anxieties concerning what it means to be the human. They encompass various cyber-horrors and eco-terrors; the shock of human integration into machinery; and 7 fears of humanity’s dissolution into the earth. Although widely dispersed across a number of technological and environmental tropes, Pynchon’s fictions return to a core existential anxiety concerning the end of humanity as we know it and the emergence of a wholly new form of being resulting from the extinction, usurpation, or (dis)integration of humanity. In a word, the central figure of Pynchon’s fiction is the ‘posthuman’—a figure perceptibly derived from the human, yet made utterly alien to human norms by its disturbed technological, environmental, or psychological circumstances. The core argument of this thesis is that Pynchon participates in several broad conventions of the Gothic genre by way of his dramatisation of anxieties surrounding the place of humanity and rationality within inhuman environments. This reading of Pynchon’s Gothicism places his work within the contemporary subgenre of the posthuman Gothic, primarily due to the author’s preoccupation with humanity’s integration into machines, but also by way of his novels’ accompanying concerns with the loss of bodily integrity, mental autonomy, and spiritual agency. By examining Pynchon as a specifically posthuman Gothic writer I wish to show that the course of human history imagined in his novels does not lead solely to apocalypse or extinction—as critical commentary on his early fiction tends to suggest—but toward a transformation of humanity by its technical and ecological surroundings.

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