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THE READER’S PROGRESS: THOMAS PYNCHON’S NOVELS AS ALLEGORIES OF CRITICAL READING PRACTICES SINCE 1945 by TOBIAS JULIAN MEINEL A DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English in the Graduate School of The University of Alabama TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA 2010 Copyright Tobias Julian Meinel 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT This project describes the influence of post-1945 cultural, societal, and political developments on reading practices in literature departments in the United States. Reading has been central to the way academics saw themselves in relation to their socio-political surroundings and has been a direct response to or expression of contemporary pressures between the years after World War II and the present. The distinct reading zeitgeist of each of these decades allows us to identify a number of paradigmatic reading stances: readers in the ivory tower, paranoid readers, doubtful readers, resisting readers, meta-readers, Luddite readers, and iconoclast readers. Thomas Pynchon is one of the few American authors who have published over this exact time span. His novels, when interpreted as allegories of reading, not only reflect the complex changes that have taken place in the reading zeitgeist since 1945 but also lure their readers into assuming certain roles. This “interpellative” function of Pynchon’s novels works in a way that disrupts and challenges the dominant reading paradigm. Pynchon’s sustained preoccupation with reading not only unifies his later novels with his “classical” work of the 1960s and 1970s but also shows him as the most prominent observer of and commentator on post-1945 reading practices in the academy. ii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AtD Against the Day CL The Crying of Lot 49 En “Entropy” GR Gravity’s Rainbow MD Mason & Dixon SR “The Small Rain” VL Vineland iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS An often quoted sentence from Pirate Prentice’s vision of London’s evacuation at the beginning of Gravity’s Rainbow sums up a recurring feeling while working on this dissertation: “No, this is not a disentanglement from, but a progressive knotting into —…” Having felt more than once that my project was turning into something of a Gordian Knot, I want to thank everyone who helped me disentangle my thoughts and tie them into the following 200 or so pages. First of all, thank you to my dissertation director Fred Whiting, who has helped me throughout this project with the most useful advice and the best pep talks one could ask for. I left his office completely overwhelmed on several occasions—but never without invaluable ideas about how to improve my project or quotable (and unquotable) pieces of wisdom that I will never forget. I am also indebted to the members of my dissertation committee: Barbara Fischer, Heather White, Michael Martone, and Phil Beidler. Thank you for all your help and support throughout this process. Thank you to the Graduate Council of the University of Alabama. The Dissertation Fellowship in the academic year 2009/2010 contributed significantly to my being able to fully concentrate on this project and complete it in time. I am eternally grateful to my proofreaders: my dad (equipped with his electronic translator) and Shelley Akers, who did much more than I could ever have asked for. Thank you to all my friends: without you I am nothing! iv And finally, much thanks and love to my family (Mom, Dad, Maresa, Fabi, Großmama, and Großvater) for moral, financial, and all kinds of other support. v CONTENTS ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... ii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ......................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .............................................................................................................. iv 1. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................... 1 a. Maps of Reading .................................................................................................................... 1 b. But wait, there’s more! .......................................................................................................... 7 c. Pynchon’s Novels as Allegories of Critical Reading Practices .............................................. 9 2. 1945-1963: THE READER IN THE IVORY TOWER ............................................................ 14 a. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 14 b. The Street: Television, the G.I. Bill, and the Paperback Explosion ..................................... 16 c. Anxieties ............................................................................................................................... 19 d. The Hothouse: Retreat into the Ivory Tower ....................................................................... 23 e. Readers in Retreat: “The Small Rain” and “Entropy” ......................................................... 28 f. Streets and Hothouses: Pynchon’s V. .................................................................................. 37 g. Outlook ................................................................................................................................. 46 3. 1963-1973: THE PARANOID READER ................................................................................. 49 a. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 49 b. Paranoia ................................................................................................................................ 50 c. The Times They Are a-Changin’ .......................................................................................... 52 d. Paranoid Readers .................................................................................................................. 58 vi e. Stencil, Oedipa, and Us ........................................................................................................ 63 f. Stencil and Oedipa as Paranoid Readers ............................................................................... 65 g. Reading V. and The Crying of Lot 49 ................................................................................... 69 h. The Void: Looking Ahead ................................................................................................... 74 4. 1973-1980: READING BETWEEN DOUBT AND HOPE ...................................................... 78 a. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 78 b. Snapshot 1973 ...................................................................................................................... 80 c. Doubt: Loss of Trust and the Doubtful Reader .................................................................... 84 d. Hope: The Me Decade and Reader-response Criticism ....................................................... 91 e. The Slothrop in All of Us ..................................................................................................... 96 f. Slothrop’s Move Beyond the Paranoid Reader ..................................................................... 98 g. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold : Thematic and Structural De-centering ............ 101 h. The Zone: Reading between Doubt and Hope ................................................................... 103 i. Doubtful Readers ................................................................................................................ 105 j. The Rorschach Text: Hope ................................................................................................. 109 k. “You are free. You are free…” .......................................................................................... 113 l. Re-centering ........................................................................................................................ 116 5. 1980-1991: RESISTING READERS. POLITICIZATION AND DEFENSIVE MOVES ..... 118 a. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 118 b. Reagan, Globalization, Multiculturalism, and Technology in the Culture Wars ............... 120 c. Reading in the Academy: Empiricism and Pluralism ........................................................ 127 d. Resisting Readers ............................................................................................................... 132 e. Vineland .............................................................................................................................. 139 vii f. Vineland ’s America ............................................................................................................ 141 g. Hooked on Television: Viewers, not Readers .................................................................... 145 h. Everybody’s Kung Fu Fighting: Reader-Character Parallels in Vineland ......................... 150 i. Recalibrating Vineland ........................................................................................................ 156 6. 1991 onwards: THE THEORY MESS AND META-READERS .........................................
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