DOCSLIB.ORG

Century American Fiction

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Century American Fiction THE LACK OF A FUTURE: UTOPIAN ABSENCE AND LONGING IN TWENTIETH- AND TWENTY-FIRST- CENTURY AMERICAN FICTION A dissertation submitted to Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Geoffrey Moses May, 2013 Dissertation written by Geoffrey Moses Ph.D., Kent State University, USA, 2013 M.A., Carnegie Mellon University, USA, 2005 B.A., Sarah Lawrence College, USA, 2002 Approved by Kevin Floyd, Associate Professor of English, Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Tammy Clewell, Professor of English, Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Robert Trogdon, Professor of English, Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Kenneth Bindas, Professor of History, Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Richard Serpe, Professor of Sociology, Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Accepted by Robert W. Trogdon, Chair, Department of Computer Science Raymond A. Craig, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences ii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 UPTON SINCLAIR'S ANTI-UTOPIAN METHODS......................................33 CHAPTER 2 TOTALITY, POTENTIALITY, AND HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS IN DOS PASSOS' U.S.A.................................................................................................... 75 CHAPTER 3 ROBERT COOVER, RICHARD NIXON, AND THE SEARCH FOR AN APOLITICAL UTOPIA....................................................................................115 CHAPTER 4 THOMAS PYNCHON, AGAINST THE DAY, AND UTOPIAN POTENTIALITY...............................................................................................155 CODA..............................................................................................................................201 BIBLIOGRAPHY..........................................................................................................206 iii DEDICATION To my parents, without whom, for better or worse, I would never have accomplished this. iv Introduction This dissertation is about utopia. Specifically, it is about utopia as conceptualized in twentieth-century American literature. I first became interested in this topic when I saw that Thomas Pynchon's novel Against the Day was covering much the same time period and thus much of the same political terrain as Upton Sinclair's advocacy novels from the first several decades of the century. Naturally, the tone and general philosophy of Pynchon's novel is worlds apart from Sinclair's work, but I became interested in the way the two represent different ways of thinking about both politics and utopia. How does a novel's sociopolitical milieu determine the terms in which it is possible to conceptualize utopia? How do purely personal ideals and political aspiration interact in utopian terms? For that matter, is “political utopia” even possible? To try to answer these questions, I have chosen four texts to examine. The first is a pair of novels by Upton Sinclair, King Coal (1917) and The Coal War (1976; published posthumously). These represent an earnest effort to expose the exploitive living conditions of miners and agitate for a redress of the situation. The second is John Dos Passos' U.S.A. trilogy, consisting of the novels The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936). Dos Passos' politics in these books are similar to those of Sinclair, but the tone is considerably more pessimistic. They could easily be read as a rebuttal to the latter's work. Jumping forty years forward, the third book is Robert Coover's novel The Public Burning (1977), about the days in June 1953 leading up to the 1 2 executions of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. This novel is part of a postmodern milieu, and therefore qualitatively different than either of the examples to come before it. From it, we can see that the relationship between the political and utopian has become radically altered, as indeed has the meaning of both of those terms. Finally, there is Against the Day (2006) itself—a novel that, while identifiably in the same postmodern tradition as The Public Burning, is distinct from it—as, indeed, distinct from Pynchon's own previous work—in that it conceptualizes utopia in a different, somewhat more optimistic way. The central point of commonality between these novels is that their approaches to utopia all consist of elaborate mechanisms that, explicitly or implicitly, show that the strains of utopia that they are fumbling towards are in fact impossible. The only one to insist otherwise—to present utopia as anything other than a brief, transient moment, present only to ultimately emphasize its absence—is Against the Day, and as I show, that novel does so in a completely different vein than any of the others under consideration. What I am most interested in as regards utopia, then, is not so much the thing itself as it is the utopia-shaped absence that we see in these works, an absence which informs them all in different ways. It is often taken for granted that utopia has become difficult or impossible to achieve in a postmodern milieu, due to various factors having to do with the fragmentation of historical continuities and a general loss of any teleological context in which to frame them. But in this dissertation, I go beyond this conventional wisdom to consider more specifically the factors that lead to this state of affairs. In that 3 sense, my work here is a narrative, explicating the specific mechanisms that seem to make utopia so difficult, and not just in a postmodern era. The Personal and the Political Another important aspect of this work is the question of how the political and personal interact. When I refer to the “personal,” I am talking about the pursuit of relationships, romantic or otherwise, that do not, in and of themselves, appear to contribute to political goals. The personal can be utopian in its own right, but it has to contend with of whether, if political utopia cannot be achieved, this other version is actually valuable, or whether it is nothing more than a hollow consolation. All of the writers I investigate here are concerned, in one way or another, with the question of the political and personal. As will become apparent, another part of the argument I am making here is that there is a problem, which is that these two factors are out of balance in these novels. The authors do have the idea that there is some connection between the two; that the political cannot be very effective if people are not able to form substantial relationships with one another—but they do not as a rule pursue this analysis further. In the first and second chapters, neither Sinclair nor Dos Passos ask whether there is any way that relationships could, even if they do not seem to be providing any concrete political advantage, be useful nonetheless; for them, the answer 4 would obviously be that there is not. In the third and fourth chapters, there is a sense in both Coover and Pynchon that politics as it exists is so divorced from actual socioeconomic reality that the only viable option is to pursue personal utopias—though this, as I argue, proves highly problematic in its own right, as it is not so easy, or necessarily desirable, to try to separate personal and political. Taxonomies of Utopia Fredric Jameson suggests that the essential problem with the notion of “utopia” in a postmodern setting comes from the idea that “postmodernism is . at one with the definitive 'end of ideologies,” and that “'ideology in this sense meant Marxism, and its 'end' went hand-in-hand with the end of Utopia” (Postmodernism 159). Jameson disputes the idea that this is a wholly accurate summation, but argues that it's true inasmuch as the nature of utopia has changed: The utopian impulses of the sixties did not . coalesce in that way [the way typified by earlier works like Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward], but rather produced a vital range of micropolitical movements . whose common denominator is the resurgent problematic of nature in a variety of (often anticapitalist) forms. (160). 5 In other words, “utopia” becomes a synchronic, or spatial form; rather than a diachronic, or temporal one: it thinks in terms of structures or geographies rather than histories or teleologies. This is a mixed blessing: on the one hand, “it may take away . the capacity to think time and History;” on the other, it “also opens a door onto a whole new domain for libidinal investment of the Utopian and even the protopolitical type” (160). I do not dispute the validity of this narrative, but I want to suggest another. Utopia of a certain sort—i.e., that which can be a synonym for Marxism or, more broadly, any radical leftist reconfiguring of society—was, for writers like Sinclair and Dos Passos, highly problematic well before postmodernity became ascendent. However, the move to postmodernity does affect the ways in which we can think about utopia or its absence, and I wish to build upon the disappointment that it can engender and ask: if the idea of a temporal utopia is dead in postmodern terms, then in what ways do we register its absence? What strategies do writers and characters use to attempt to enact it in spite of everything? I do not think it is adequate to simply accept that this type of utopia simply vanishes. As I argue, it was always felt more by its absence than its presence, which means that when it seems to be absent in a different way, we should consider this way, rather than assuming that it has simply become an irrelevant consideration. Each of the books I discuss can be read as a particular reaction to the impossibility of utopia, and these reactions are highly revealing of the landscapes in which they were written. King Coal is agitating for utopia, and even believes to some degree that this utopia is possible, but as I argue, it is actually, however consciously, a self-defeating argument: the novel is constructed such that actual utopia is precluded. 6 U.S.A. has definitively decided that utopia is impossible, and shows in quite some detail why this is the case. I, however, show that, while Dos Passos makes a compelling case, his devotion to a particular sort of utopia blinds him to other possibilities; that is, to the possibility of a utopia that does not accord with the sort that he is searching for.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Narrative Genres Narrative Text 1
    Moorgate Primary School English: INTENT Grammar, Punctuation and Writing Genres Criteria for Fiction and Non-Fiction Genres This is a suggested overview for each genre, giving a list of grammar and punctuation. It is not a definitive list. It will depend on the age group as to what you will include or exclude. For each genre you will work on vocabulary such as prefixes, suffixes, antonyms, synonyms, homonyms, etc. Where possible, different sentence structures should be taught. This will be developed through the year and throughout the Key Stage. Narrative Genres Narrative text 1. Adventure and mystery stories – past tense First or third person 2. Myths and legends – past tense Inverted commas 3. Stories with historical settings – past tense Personification 4. Stories set in imaginary worlds – past or future tense Similes 5. Stories with issues and dilemmas – past tense Metaphors 6. Flashback – past and present tense Onomatopoeia 7. Traditional fairy story – past tense Noun phrases 8. Ghost story – past tense Different sentence openers (prepositions, adverbs, connectives, “- ing” words, adverbs, “-ed” words, similes) Synonyms Antonyms Specific nouns (proper) Semicolons to separate two sentences Colons to separate two sentences of equal weighting Informal and formal language Lists of three – adjectives and actions Indefinite pronouns Emotive language Non-Fiction Genres Explanation text Recount text Persuasive text Report text Play scripts Poetry text Discussion text Present tense (This includes genres Present tense Formal language Exclamation
    [Show full text]
  • Myth and Carnival in Robert Coover's the Public Burning
    ROBERTO MARIA DAINOTTO Myth and Carnival in Robert Coover's The Public Burning Certain situations in Coover's fictions seem to conspire with a sense of impending disaster, which we have visited upon us from day to day. We have had, in that sense, an unending sequence of apocalypses, long before Christianity began and up to the present... in a lot of contemporary fiction there's a sense of foreboding disaster which is part of the times, just like self reflexive fictions. (Coover 1983, 78) As allegory, the trope of the apocalypse—a postmodern version of the Aristotelian tragic catastrophe—stands at the center of Coover's choice of content, his method of treating his materials, and his view of writing. In his fictions, one observes desperate people caught in religious nightmares leading to terrible catastrophes, a middle-aged man whose life is sacrificed at the altar of an imaginary baseball game, beautiful women repeatedly killed in the Gothic intrigues of Gerald's Party, and other hints and omens of death and annihilation. And what about the Rosenbergs, whom the powers that be "determined to burn... in New York City's Times Square on the night of their fourteenth wedding anniversary, Thursday, June 18, 1953"(PB 3)?1 In The Public Burning, apocalypse becomes holocaust—quite literally, the Greek holokauston, a "sacrifice consumed by fire." What proves interesting from a narrative point of view is that Coover makes disaster, apocalypse and holocaust part of the materials of the fictions" of the times"—which he calls" self-reflexive fictions." But what is the relation between genocide, human annihilation, and self-reflexive fictions? How do fictions" of the times" reflect holocaust? Larry McCaffery suggests: 6 Dainotto in most of Coover's fiction there exists a tension between the process of man creating his fictions and his desire to assert that his systems have an independent existence of their own.
    [Show full text]
  • A Quest for Historical Truth in Postmodernist American Fiction
    A Quest For Historical Truth in Postmodernist American Fiction Sung, Kyung-Jun I Since the 1970's there have been ongoing debates about the nature of postmodernist American fiction. Many of the critics involved in these debates tend to think of postmoder- nist American fiction as metafiction, surfiction, or fabulation, emphasizing the self-reflexive characteristic of these fictions. We can see this trend of criticism reflected in the titles of books: Robert Scholes's Fabulation and Metajction (1979), Larry McCaffery's The Metajctional Muse (1982), and Patricia Waugh's MetaJiction (1984), which are regarded as important criticisms of postmodernist American fiction. Without denying that the metafictional trend is a conspicuous characteristic in postmodernist American fiction, it also appears to be correct to state that postmodernist American writers' concern with the social reality in which they live is an equal factor in the shaping of their works. When we examine postmodernist American fiction more closely, we find that it, though metafictional and self-reflexive in form, starts with paying serious attention to the cultural, social and political circumstances of America which have changed rapidly since the 1960's. This fact that postmodernist American writers pay close attention to the current problems and troubles of importance in America is exemplified concretely in the themes of their works. For example, E.L. Doctorow's The Book of Daniel (1971) and Robert Coover's The Public Burning (1977) deal with the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who were victimized in the whirlpool of the Cold War; Thomas Pynchon's V. (1964) and Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America (1967) focus on the the disorder and desolation of modern American society; John Barth's Giles Goat-Boy (1966) analyzes the ideological conflict between Capitalism and Communism and the social problems in the electronic age; Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (1973) gets at the heart of the nuclear war and, as a result of it, the fall of the world.
    [Show full text]
  • Legacy of Abuse: Confronting the Past, Facing the Future
    The Legacy of Abuse Confronting the Past, Facing the Future Alice H. Henkin Editor Copyright 2002 by The Aspen Institute The Aspen Institute Suite 700 One Dupont Circle, NW Washington, DC 20036 Published in the United States of America All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America ISBN 0-89843-342-8 THE LEGACY OF ABUSE Confronting the Past, Facing the Future Table of Contents Preface Alice H. Henkin and Norman Dorsen . 1 Conference Report Paul van Zyl and Mark Freeman . 3 Where We Are and How We Got Here: An Overview of Developments in the Search for Justice and Reconciliation Neil Kritz . 21 The Pinochet Case: International and Domestic Repercussions Jose Zalaquett . 47 Reflections on Intergenerational Justice Jonathan Steinberg . 71 Justice and Reconciliation: Responsibilities and Dilemmas of Peace-makers and Peace-builders Ian Martin . 81 Contributors . 91 Acronyms . 93 Participant List . 95 iii Preface The origin of this volume dates back to late 1988, when several rights-abusing regimes in Latin America were moving toward becoming rights-respecting democracies. At that time, the Justice and Society Program of the Aspen Institute, with the support of the Ford Foundation, brought together a group of human rights scholars and advocates for a conference on State Crimes: Punishment or Pardon. Three background papers and the conference report were published and widely distributed the following year. At that time there appeared to be only two ways in which successor regimes might deal with human rights violators who had remained members of the community…arrest, prosecute, and punish, or amnesty and amnesia.
    [Show full text]
  • Tenses and Conjugation (Pdf)
    Created by the Evergreen Writing Center Library 3407 867-6420 Tenses and Conjugation Using correct verb forms is crucial to communicating coherently. Understanding how to apply different tenses and properly conjugate verbs will give you the tools with which to craft clear, effective sentences. Conjugations A conjugation is a list of verb forms. It catalogues the person, number, tense, voice, and mood of a verb. Knowing how to conjugate verbs correctly will help you match verbs with their subjects, and give you a firmer grasp on how verbs function in different sentences. Here is a sample conjugation table: Present Tense, Active Voice, Indicative Mood: Jump Person Singular Plural 1st Person I jump we jump 2nd Person you jump you jump 3rd Person he/she/it jumps they jump Person: Person is divided into three categories (first, second, and third person), and tells the reader whether the subject is speaking, is spoken to, or is spoken about. Each person is expressed using different subjects: first person uses I or we; second person uses you; and third person uses he/she/it or they. Keep in mind that these words are not the only indicators of person; for example in the sentence “Shakespeare uses images of the divine in his sonnets to represent his own delusions of grandeur”, the verb uses is in the third person because Shakespeare could be replaced by he, an indicator of the third person. Number: Number refers to whether the verb is singular or plural. Tense: Tense tells the reader when the action of a verb takes place.
    [Show full text]
  • In Formal Contexts: the Paratextual Features of Historiographic Metafiction
    In Formal Contexts: The Paratextual Features of Historiographic Metafiction By Keith Kirouac, B.A. A Thesis submitted to the Department of English California State University Bakersfield In Partial Fulfillment for the Degree of Masters of English Fall 2015 Copyright By Keith Laurien Kirouac 2015 In Formal Contexts: The Paratextual Features of Historiographic Metafiction By Keith Kirouac This thesis or project has been accepted on behalf of the Department of English by their supervisory committee: D~:*~~Commt ee Chair 16(~~ Dr. Carol Dell'Amico Acknowledgements Upon the completion of this thesis project (my death as an author if for no cause other than exhaustion) I would like to thank my readers, Dr. Monica Ayuso and Dr. Carol Dell'Amico, for taking time out of their busy schedules to examine this relatively insignificant work. I am also grateful to Dr. Kim Flachmann, Dr. Charles MacQuarrie, Dr. Susan Stafinbil, Dr. Andrew Troup, and Christy Gavin for helping to guide me through the research which led to this paper. Abstract The Introduction to this thesis defines a number of key terms and concepts related to the study of paratexts in historiographic metafiction. The chapters that follow describe how paratextual forms operate within specific historiographic metafictional novels. The first of these chapters covers the footnotes in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, painting the novel's narrator as a fairly typical historiographer. The second chapter delves into the metafictional elements tied to the appendices which conclude The Lord of the Rings and argues that J.R.R. Tolkien's reputation as an author and scholar may have influenced the development of that novel.
    [Show full text]
  • Dissertation M.C. Cissell December 2016
    ARC OF THE ABSENT AUTHOR: THOMAS PYNCHON’S TRAJECTORY FROM ENTROPY TO GRACE A Dissertation Submitted to the Department of English and German Philology In partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of English Philology Matthew Clayton Cissell December 2016 Director: María Felisa López Liquete Co-director: Ángel Chaparro Sainz (c)2017 MATTHEW CLAYTON CISSELL Abstract The central thesis of this dissertation is that Thomas Pynchon has come to occupy a specific position in the field of literature and that this can be seen in his latest novel, Against the Day , in which he is not so much writing about the past or even the present, but about what the present can become, about where it might be driven. Pynchon is self-consciously exploring the politics in the discursive field in which his book is situated, using the fin-de-siècle to highlight the ways that the present is geared toward catastrophe and that people, in a dans macabre , hurl themselves toward that endgame. The theoretical view and methodology behind my analysis of the novel draws to a great extent on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, specifically his sociological literary analysis. This sets an academic precedent in studies of Pynchon’s novels but it also requires applying an approach that has several necessary and onerous steps. In order to see how the social space of the novel is a refracted image of the author’s own social world one must analyse the field of power, after that the literary field and the positions of agents, next the space of possibilities, all of which help one understand the genesis of the author’s habitus and thus his trajectory and the creative project that develops.
    [Show full text]
  • Demonizing Unions: Religious Rhetoric in the Early 20Th
    DEMONIZING UNIONS: RELIGIOUS RHETORIC IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY AMERICAN STRIKE NOVEL A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by David Michael Cosca August 2019 © David Michael Cosca DEMONIZING UNIONS: RELIGIOUS RHETORIC IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY AMERICAN STRIKE NOVEL David Michael Cosca, Ph. D. Cornell University 2019 Demonizing Unions uncovers the significance of a Biblical idiom in American novels portraying violent labor conflicts from the 1910s to the 1930s. I reveal the different ways that Upton Sinclair’s King Coal and The Coal War, Mary Heaton Vorse’s Strike!, and Ruth McKenney’s Industrial Valley employ a Biblical motif both to emphasize the God-like power of Capital over society, and to critique an emergent socio-political faith in business power. The texts I examine demonstrate how it was clear to industrialists in the early 20th century that physical violence was losing its efficacy. Therefore, much of the brunt of the physical conflict in labor struggles could be eased by waging a war of ideas to turn public opinion into an additional, ultimately more powerful, weapon against the potential of organized labor. I argue that in these texts, the besmearing of the discontented workers as violent dupes of “outside agitators,” rather than regular folks with economic grievances, takes on Biblical proportions. In turn, these authors utilize Biblical stories oriented around conceptions of power and hierarchy to illuminate the potential of ordinary humans to effect their own liberation. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH David Cosca grew up in Santa Maria, CA.
    [Show full text]
  • John Ahouse-Upton Sinclair Collection, 1895-2014
    http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8cn764d No online items INVENTORY OF THE JOHN AHOUSE-UPTON SINCLAIR COLLECTION, 1895-2014, Finding aid prepared by Greg Williams California State University, Dominguez Hills Archives & Special Collections University Library, Room 5039 1000 E. Victoria Street Carson, California 90747 Phone: (310) 243-3895 URL: http://www.csudh.edu/archives/csudh/index.html ©2014 INVENTORY OF THE JOHN "Consult repository." 1 AHOUSE-UPTON SINCLAIR COLLECTION, 1895-2014, Descriptive Summary Title: John Ahouse-Upton Sinclair Collection Dates: 1895-2014 Collection Number: "Consult repository." Collector: Ahouse, John B. Extent: 12 linear feet, 400 books Repository: California State University, Dominguez Hills Archives and Special Collections Archives & Special Collection University Library, Room 5039 1000 E. Victoria Street Carson, California 90747 Phone: (310) 243-3013 URL: http://www.csudh.edu/archives/csudh/index.html Abstract: This collection consists of 400 books, 12 linear feet of archival items and resource material about Upton Sinclair collected by bibliographer John Ahouse, author of Upton Sinclair, A Descriptive Annotated Bibliography . Included are Upton Sinclair books, pamphlets, newspaper articles, publications, circular letters, manuscripts, and a few personal letters. Also included are a wide variety of subject files, scholarly or popular articles about Sinclair, videos, recordings, and manuscripts for Sinclair biographies. Included are Upton Sinclair’s A Monthly Magazine, EPIC Newspapers and the Upton Sinclair Quarterly Newsletters. Language: Collection material is primarily in English Access There are no access restrictions on this collection. Publication Rights All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Director of Archives and Special Collections.
    [Show full text]
  • Reading Locally, Teaching Globally: How Local Stories Can Inspire Students to Ask Universal Questions Jeraldine R
    Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice Summer 2017 (9:1) Reading Locally, Teaching Globally: How Local Stories Can Inspire Students to Ask Universal Questions Jeraldine R. Kraver, University of Northern Colorado Abstract: Literature offers what Santayana calls, "rehearsals for rational living," partly through the questions it poses, including those Mark Edmundson raises in Why Read?: "Who am I?" "What might I become?" "What is the world in which I find myself?" "How might it be changed for the better?" I engage students with such questions by reading locally— choosing texts set in our backyard. In Colorado, the local connections of Upton Sinclair's forgotten novel, King Coal create initial interest; however, the plot and protagonists offer opportunities for students to engage in the imaginative rehearsals required to answer these essential questions. I first encountered Upton Sinclair's King Coal as a graduate student at the University of Kentucky. The novel was integral to the first essay I ever published—a discussion of Sinclair's work alongside Germinal (Emile Zola's naturalistic view of miners in France) and Matewan (John Sayles' a film about the West Virginia coal wars). The thesis of that essay is irrelevant here, but what does matter and does disturb me is that, despite residing just a few hours from Harlan County—where the battle between local miners and Duke Power had been the subject of the Oscar-winning documentary, Harlan County, USA—in a state abutting West Virginia, it never occurred to me to make the connection between the literature of the past and the issues of coal mining in the present.
    [Show full text]
  • Book Reviews, Special Pynchon-Scholarship-In-Languages-Other-Than-English Orbit
    orbit. Review How to Cite: Chetwynd, A, Bugno-Narecka, D, Kipouridou, R, Abe, K, Vanicek, V, Brondino, A and Ryckx, M 2021 Book Reviews, Special Pynchon- Scholarship- in-Languages-Other-than-English Edition, 2020. Orbit: A Journal of American Literature, 9(1): 1, 1–40. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/orbit.3404 Published: 15 January 2021 Peer Review: Orbit’s book reviews are handled by the reviews editor and do not go through the same blind peer-review process as its scholarly articles. Copyright: © 2021 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Open Access: Orbit: A Journal of American Literature is a peer-reviewed open access journal. Digital Preservation: The Open Library of Humanities and all its journals are digitally preserved in the CLOCKSS scholarly archive service. The Open Library of Humanities is an open access non-profit publisher of scholarly articles and monographs. Chetwynd, A, et al. 2021 Book Reviews, Special Pynchon-Scholarship-in-Languages-Other-than-English orbit. Edition, 2020. Orbit: A Journal of American Literature, 9(1): 1, 1–40. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/orbit.3404 REVIEW Book Reviews, Special Pynchon- Scholarship-in-Languages-Other-than- English Edition, 2020 [a note from the Book Reviews Editor: if you’re interested in reviewing a book on any aspect of unconventional post-1945 US literature, please send an email proposing a review to [email protected]] Ali Chetwynd, Dominika Bugno-Narecka, Romina Kipouridou, Kodai Abe, Vit Vanicek, Andrea Brondino and Michel Ryckx Book Reviews, of: Pióro & Paryż (eds) – Thomas Pynchon [Polish] Aliaga (ed) – Thomas Pynchon [Spanish] Nagano –トマス・ピンチョン──帝国、戦争、システム、そして選びに与れぬ 者の生 [Japanese – Thomas Pynchon: Empire, War, System, and the Lives of Preterites] Oleha – Perspektivy Konce: Thomas Pynchon a Americky Román po 11.
    [Show full text]
  • The Simple Verb Tenses
    Simple Verb Tenses present past future Past Form: past tense of the base form Present Form: base form/-s form Future Form: will + base form or is + (present participle)ing + infinitive TENSE EXAMPLES MEANING Simple Past Tense It snowed yesterday. At one particular time in the past, this Amar watched TV last night. happened. It began and ended in the past. I walked to school yesterday. John lived in Paris for ten years. Carlos bought a new car three days ago. Rita stood in an alcove when it began to rain. When Mrs. Chu heard a strange noise, she got up to investigage. When Kasia dropped her cup, coffee spilled on her lap. Simple Present Tense It snows in Alaska. In general, the simple present tense expresses The world is round. events or situations that exist always, usually, Water consists of hydrogen and oxygen. habitually; they have existed in the past, they The average person breathes 21,600 exist now, and they probably will exist in the times a day. future. The simple present tense expresses general statements of fact and timeless truths. Ivan watches TV every day. The simple present tense is also used to I study for two hours every night. express habitual or everyday activities. I wake up at six every morning. Andre drives to work daily. Simple Future Tense It will snow tomorrow. At one particular time in the future, this will It is going to snow tomorrow. happen. Calvin will finish his work tomorrow. Calvin is going to finish his work tomorrow. We will study the Incas before we return next summer.
    [Show full text]