HYPERBOLIC REALISM IN THOMAS PYNCHON'S AND ROBERTO BOLAÑO'S LATE MAXIMALIST NOVELS AGAINST THE DAY & 2666 presented by / présenté par Samir Sellami to principal supervisor / au directeur de thèse Prof. Jonathan Pollock (Université de Perpignan Via Domitia) to co-tutelle supervisor / au co-directeur (co-tutelle) Prof. Fernando Resende (Universidade Federal Fluminense) and to external experts / et aux experts externes Prof. Pascale Amiot (Université de Perpignan Via Domitia) Prof. Ingrid Hotz-Davies (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen) Prof. Benjamim Picado (Universidade Federal Fluminense) in partial fulfillment of a Doctorate in the Humanities Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate Cultural Studies in Literary Interzones January 31, 2018 Université de Perpignan Via Domitia / Universidade Federal Fluminense DECLARATION OF GOOD ACADEMIC CONDUCT I, SAMIR SELLAMI, hereby certify that this dissertation, which is 99841 words in length, has been written by me, that it is a record of work carried out by me, and that it has not been submitted in any previous application for a higher degree. All sentences or passages quoted in this dissertation from other people's work (with or without trivial changes) have been placed within quotation marks, and specifically acknowledged by reference to au- thor, work and page. I understand that plagiarism – the unacknowledged use of such passages – will be considered grounds for failure in this disser- tation and in the degree program as a whole. I also affirm that, with the ex- ception of the specific acknowledgements, the following dissertation is en- tirely my own work. Berlin / Perpignan / Rio de Janeiro: January 31, 2018 1 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Like every piece of labor, this research project was made possible with the great help and support of many individuals and institutions. If I hope that I am going to thank as many as possible of them in the following lines, I am sadly aware that there are always many more that I will probably forget. First of all, I have to thank all the people involved in the organization of the Erasmus Mundus Project Literary Studies in Cultural Interzones, most notably the regional coordinators Franca Franchi (Bergamo), Jonathan Pol- lock (UPVD), Zachary Sng (Brown), and Fernando Resende (UFF); Didier Girard, the program's general coordinator and Elena Mazzoleni, his assistant in Bergamo; and everybody who helped me organizing the paperwork with a lot of patience and kindness: Sylvain Jouhette, Marie Le Duc, Tracy Miller, Luciana and Marco Roxo. I thank my supervisors Jonathan Pollock (Perpignan) and Fernando Resende (Rio de Janeiro) who were a great source of intellectual inspiration, backed up and challenged my decisions, enriched my work directly and in- directly with ideas and comments, and gave me the reassuring feeling that I could count on them whenever things would get difficult. I thank the mem- bers of my jury Ingrid Hotz-Davies (Tübingen), Pascale Amiot (Perpignan), and Benjamim Picado (Rio de Janeiro) who agreed to read and evaluate my work within an almost inhumanly short time period. I also want to thank a few professors who shaped my way of thinking and my research persona, or supported my intellectual endeavors in im- portant ways: Philipp Ekardt, Oliver Lubrich, Tanja Nusser, Gert Mat- tenklott, Lothar Müller, Ernst Osterkamp, Irene Albers, Marc Redfield, Hé- ctor Hoyos, Ingrid Hotz-Davies and Gabriel Giorgi. 2 Writing remains a lonely endeavor. It is impregnated, however, with the energies that crossed its paths. I would never have been able to write this text, were it not for the many and often unwittingly collaborative surround- ing spirits. First of all, I want to thank my parents for many years of care, love and support, for their human decency and for upholding the ideals of dis- cussion, disagreement and courage. I thank my grandparents for their love and unconditional support and many shared hours of uncomplicated joy. I thank my brother Faruk for sharing almost everything with me, for the in- finite jest we had while growing up and for stirring up my intellectual curi- osity at a very early age. I also want to thank my whole family in Tunisia for their indescribable hospitality and for raising my awareness that there are different, but ultimately compatible ways of worldmaking. In no particular order, I want to send my thanks to my friends and soulmates without whom I could never have written this: to Verena for opening my pores to many environments and showing me that the body has a tremendous intelligence; to Fred who is always there and who will always be there and for whom – and I find myself in rare disagreement with Maggie Nelson at this point – words are just not good enough; to Norman who made me read 2666 in Paris and then stuck around for answers until today; to Clara who sent me Gegen den Tag in a parcel from Hamburg and who shared my first conference trip to Vienna, which turned out to be more about Gaumenfreuden than Geistesfreuden; to Pierre – the one who knows how to wait for the wave and how to ride on it; to Marion, l'enfant grande that never sleeps, for all those repeated intellectual fireworks; to Krüschi for crawling with me on our self-made West-Eastern divan; to Isabel for so many unforgettable conversations & situations, for introducing me to the philosophy of breathing and for showing me that sometimes it is what is and that if it is true it is true; to Till for Stabi-Käsekuchen and being a running mate as undisciplined as I am; to Nick for his curiosity and enthusiasm; to 3 Sherlley for her tasteful intelligence and for sharing her ventriloquial passions with me; to Amanda for purpurina-flavored conversations in touch with the cosmos; to Lucia for showing me what it means to flirt with writers and texts; to Nele for sharing with me that differential dance of intelligibility and unintelligibility; to Mira for long and winding walks and talks; to Icaro for turning shit into gold and letting me assist a bit; to Kim for five crazy days on the parquet; to Nico for Das kosmische Wackeln; to Ian whose smartness outsmarts long working hours; to Héctor who became a friend on the basis of a single review; to Ingrid for consoling me with her dare-devilish energy; to Eve for many Puchas! during the last laps of the race; to Amina for pan-arabic get-togethers and uplifting messages; to Deborah, my sister in Rio, for all the carinho and for sharing her home & her memories with me; to Fernando for adopting me to his family of committed researchers in Rio; to Hermano for cerebral explosions and the longue durée that will surely come out of them; to my flat mates Matt, Vincent, François, and Cora; to Thomas for skipping the usual affectual levels; to Zoran for his vibrant coolness spilled over many drinks between Bergamo and Belgrade; to Natalia for three weeks of extended carnival; to Tatiana, the embodiment of open- mindedness; to Marco, my comrade and educator; to Chris whose voice speaks like an agent of fate through the last pages of this dissertation; to Tobias who gave me that one vital advice at the end; to Elli for never letting me pay my own drinks when he is around; to Ahmed for many reduced coffees and checking the weather together; to Gabriel for a few phenoumenodelic improvisations; to Hauke & Jana for those fortifying glasses of pastis; to Caro, Marius, Edna, Felix, Madi, Tila, Margaret, Paola, Svenja, Mauro, Iryna, Carlo, Geoffrey, Fabiana, Ekkehard, Danilo, Peter, Izabel, Gregor, Mohammad, Nicolas, Nicola, Pedro, Ziad, Benji, Artur & Diane for being true friends and inspirational sources for one or another twist of the mind that found its oblique way into this dissertation. 4 I also want to thank Geschwister Nothaft, O.A.K. and, above all, Erika & Hilde for fueling my body with coffee and drinks during intense writing sessions. I thank the lovely staff of Al-Akawi for uncountable fattahs and musabahas that prepared me against the day. I want to thank the people at PAF for giving me an intellectual home for a couple of days. Infinite thanks go out to the LECKEN community for cultivating the sex appeal of the inorganic & for boosting my cognitive and affective flexibility in a crucial moment of my writing. I also thank the staff and the users of the wonderful Ibero-American Institute in Berlin, my writing bubble; and I thank voo- doohop, weval, agar agar, erykah badu, madvillain, this mortal coil, chico buarque, habibi funk and many others for their supply of musical energy during long hours of writing and editing. At last, I want to thank two people who were my daily source of endurance and survival during the final working phase of this dissertation: I want to thank André – hyperbolique lecteur, mon semblable, mon frère – who will read this sentence before everyone else and might even propose some adjustments. I want to thank him not only for his priceless help with the final editing of this dissertation, but also for so many sweaty days and nights in Rio. Finally, I want to thank Johanna, my breathing talismã, who was and is a constant source of sense & sensibility and who relentlessly opened her vibrant archives for me to let me devour whatever I could swallow. To those and many more, I am grateful that they fueled the infrastruc- tures that allowed me to write a 350-pages long self-help book disguised as a dissertation in comparative literature. Like any other self-help book, at the heart of this one lies a simple message that I've learned to sum up in one sentence to avoid long and tedious discussions about what this is all about: deliver yourself (with ritual reluctance) to the inhumanism of language in order to find your agencies within open-ended and material practices.