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Coversheet for Thesis in Sussex Research Online A University of Sussex DPhil thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details A “LITTLE PARENTHESIS OF LIGHT”: PYNCHON AND THE COUNTERCULTURE JOANNA ELIZABETH FREER DPHIL THESIS UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX MAY 2012 I hereby declare that this thesis has not been and will not be, submitted in whole or in part to another University for the award of any other degree. Signature :……Joanna Freer …………………… UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX JOANNA ELIZABETH FREER DPHIL AMERICAN HISTORY AND LITERATURE A “LITTLE PARENTHESIS OF LIGHT”: PYNCHON AND THE COUNTERCULTURE SUMMARY This thesis examines the countercultural politics expressed within the work of the American novelist Thomas Pynchon, contributing to critical work already published on the subject of Pynchon’s politics, in which there has been a recent upsurge of interest. Expressions of sympathy with anarchist and anti-Capitalist principles discerned in Pynchon’s work are explored in their connection with the author’s experience of particular practices and philosophies of the 1960s counterculture. Furthermore, the ongoing significance of sixties politics in Pynchon’s more recent production is demonstrated as ideological connections between earlier and later novels are traced. In Slow Learner Pynchon professed admiration for the motive energy of Beat literature, so influential on the formation of the counterculture. With particular focus on Jack Kerouac’s On the Road , chapter one demonstrates the impact of the Beat movement, and its limits, in Pynchon’s early novels. New Left thought and tactics as manifested across the decade provide the focus of the second chapter, which engages primarily with Gravity’s Rainbow ’s depiction of Communist revolutionaries in Weimar-era Germany. The following chapter considers the role of psychedelic experience and the philosophies of Timothy Leary in Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 and Against the Day , arguing that the fantastical has a concrete political role in Pynchon’s novels. Black Power, and specifically the political theory of the Black Panther Party, is the subject of chapter four. Gravity’s Rainbow ’s framing of Huey P. Newton’s concept of “revolutionary suicide” is central to an analysis which offers insights into the novel’s perspectives on the use of violence and on leadership in revolutionary groups. The final chapter investigates the dynamics of Pynchon’s ambivalent engagement with the Women’s Movement. Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique is put forward as an important intertext for The Crying of Lot 49 , while Vineland is examined in the context of radical feminism. i Contents Acknowledgements ii Abbreviations iii Introduction 1 A Note on Definitions 9 Chapter One On the Road to Anti-Structure: V., The Crying of Lot 49 and the Beats 13 I. “The Road is Life”: Motion, Transformation and New Freedoms 14 II. Transcendence, Liminality and Communitas 25 III. Into the Sixties 37 Chapter Two Love, Violence and Yippie Subversion in Gravity’s Rainbow : Pynchon 44 and the New Left I. Early Reactions to the New Left 45 II. Love as a Political Ideal 49 III. Street Protest and Other Left-Wing Strategies 56 IV. “Do it with gusto and joy”: the Yippie Alternative 64 Chapter Three The Psychedelic Movement, Anarchism, and the Political Role of 73 Fantasy in The Crying of Lot 49 and Against the Day I. The Origins of the Psychedelic Movement 75 II. Leary, LSD and The Crying of Lot 49 78 III. Capitalist Spectacles and Other Worlds: Fantasy as a Political Tool in Against the Day 88 IV. Towards Anarchism: Multiple Routes Out 97 V. Pynchon’s Anarchist Politics 103 Chapter Four The Black Panther Party, Revolutionary Suicide and Gravity’s 117 Rainbow I. Civil Rights, the Sixties and Pynchon 117 II. Panther Theory: Dialectical Materialism and Revolutionary Suicide 120 III. The Schwarzkommando Narrative: A Lesson In Revolutionary Leadership 130 Chapter Five Feminism Moderate and Radical in The Crying of Lot 49 and Vineland : 144 Pynchon and the Women’s Movement I. The Early Women’s Movement: The Feminine Mystique and The Crying of Lot 49 145 II. Radical Feminism: Motherhood and Gender Essentialism in Vineland 158 Conclusion 177 Bibliography 187 ii Acknowledgements The writing of this thesis has been rather a labour of love, and I could not have completed it without a number of people and organisations. On the academic side, my main supervisor Dr. Doug Haynes has been invaluable in offering advice, ideas and career support during the writing of this thesis. Dr. Daniel Kane, my second supervisor, also helped a great deal, particularly in the early stages of the process. I am also grateful for the welcoming attitude of many others within the American Studies faculty, Sue Currell, Maria Lauret and Robert Cook in particular, who helped me to feel a sense of belonging and offered opportunities for academic debate and discussion. The University of Sussex, of which I was an alumnus on starting this project, also deserves my appreciation. It is a place for which I will always feel a great fondness, and it has offered financial support for my DPhil in the form of a yearly bursary and funding for conference attendance. Further funding came from the Sir Richard Stapley Educational Trust, a charitable organisation whose generosity helped pay my fees. Finally, I also owe a debt of gratitude to the Castle School of English, a private language school in Brighton, who kept me in employment throughout, and especially to the ex-Director of Studies Martin Warters, whose flexibility and consideration meant I was able to combine language teaching with an associate tutor role at Sussex. Finally, I must also express my profound appreciation for the huge amount of support I have received from my partner Robin, my friends in Brighton, my grandfather Ronald, and my parents Rodney and Stephanie. iii Abbreviations Frequently mentioned works by Thomas Pynchon, Timothy Leary and Huey P. Newton are cited parenthetically in the text using the abbreviations listed below. ATD Against the Day (2006) L49 The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) GR Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) IV Inherent Vice (2009) J “A Journey Into the Mind of Watts” (1966) OTR On the Road (1957) PE The Politics of Ecstasy (1968) RS Revolutionary Suicide (1973) SL Slow Learner (1984) V. V. (1963) VL Vineland (1990) 1 Introduction “[T]he sixties have so rarely been captured well in American fiction, except by a few authors such as Pynchon: if somebody told you the history of the decade as a story, you wouldn't believe it. You'd wonder: Is this for real? Is this some kind of joke? Is it supposed to be farce or tragedy? You wouldn't know how to feel, to laugh or to cry.” – Andrew Gordon, “Smoking Dope with Thomas Pynchon” The novels of Thomas Pynchon are recognised as among the greatest produced by a contemporary American writer, but they should also be seen as important works of political philosophy. Deeply concerned with exploring and making vivid the mechanisms and motivators of oppression, Pynchon’s fictions span continents and centuries in their attempt to trace historical developments in the tactics of repressive forces. Opposing such oppression, the novels are carefully constructed so as to challenge preconceptions and prejudices. Formed of tangentially connected fragments and narrative strands to be linked and interpreted by a reader acting in relative independence, the work is innately anti-authoritarian. Concomitant with this promotion of the exercise of individual thought and imagination, Pynchon also demonstrates considerable interest in oppositional groups operating in the fields of literature, art, culture, or more traditional politics, and the alternatives they offer to current socio- economic systems. To deal in traditional political terminology, the author’s antipathy to capitalism has become ever more visible, and his relative sympathy for anarchist solutions is confirmed by Against the Day . But Pynchon’s politics are subtle and complex, and he must not be aligned too readily or completely with any particular political camp. Although fully deserving of comprehensive explication and elaboration, much of the political commentary offered by Pynchon still waits to be unravelled and appreciated. This is despite the fact that the potential social value of his well-considered insights is 2 increasing exponentially as modern societies grow more intertwined, the fortunes of each dependent upon the courses taken by many others, the imperative to learn the lessons of history and to avoid pathways leading towards violence and the abuse of power making itself ever more strongly felt. Whether or not literature can, in fact, play a significant role in fostering such understanding is a matter of long debate, and one to which Pynchon himself contributes in his 1984 introduction to the Slow Learner collection of his early short stories. Here, Pynchon claims that fiction writing is on a “spectrum of impotence” with regard to political change, incapable of really doing anything about the “succession of the
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