Pynchon Links — More Stuff

Pynchon Links that fit to more than one specific novel Literary Kicks — by Lauren Agnelli In summation: If Thomas Pynchon were an ice cream flavor, he’d be Pistachio. If Thomas Pynchon were a ‘60’s musical group, he’d be Harper’s Bizarre performing "Winchester Cathedral," or a hybrid of Tiny Tim fronting the Velvet Underground. Or the 13th Floor Elevators. If Thomas Pynchon were to resemble an author of yore, he’d be F. Scott Fitzgerald meets Henry James. If Thomas Pynchon were a holiday, he’d be Epiphany (not widely observed, but a cult favorite and a day of revelation). If Thomas Pynchon were a body of water, he’d be the Sargasso Sea. If Thomas Pynchon were fire, he’d be a pyrotechnical display the closing night that the circus is in town. Pynchon auf der Literary Kicks Seite: die Beat Generation,Transcendental America, die Bohême und der Summer of Love. Dazu hat Levi Asher einen langen Aufsatz ins Netz gestellt: Summer Of Love: Hippie Writers and Latter-Day Beats. "I concentrated on a few writers I’d already identified as the core "postmoderns" of the period – John Barth, Joseph Heller, Ken Kesey, Donald Barthelme, Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon, Richard Brautigan – and I also looked into other corners, from Latin American literature to pop bestsellers to the Updike/Roth/Bellow/Salinger crowd to the Beat poets. Among all these disparate voices, I tried to discern a single united voice of the Vietnam War era, and finally I think I did hear one. It was an ironic, quizzical voice, self-conscious, frenetic, and not at all angry or accusatory. It was silmultaneously meek and courageous – the voice of a person who would walk up to a policeman and stick a flower in his rifle barrel." Who the Hell is He? — Von James Bone. South African Sunday Times, July 7, 1998. Was bringt einen guten Profijournalisten und selbsterklärten Pynchon–Fan dazu, ein amateurhafter Paparazzo zu werden. Bone kann es nur unzureichend erklären, am schlimmsten aber sind seine Selbstrechtfertigungen — schließlich hätte Pynchon auch die Lebensgeschichten seiner Figuren Mason & Dixon ausgeplündert — die ganze Geheimhaltungscharade sei eines erwachsenen Mannes unwürdig und die Paparazzi die Stellvertreter des Volkes — Nein Danke. In Parables: Teaching Through Parables — by John J. Bonsignore, University of Massachusetts, Amherst: "One final thought comes from Thomas Pynchon who in Slow Learner could have been speaking to teachers as well as to aspiring writers: Everybody gets told to write about what they know. The trouble with many of us at the earlier stages of life is that we think we know everything, or to put it more usefully, we are often unaware of the scope and structure of our own ignorance. Ignorance is not just a blank space on a person’s mental map. It has contours and coherence, and for all I know rules for its operation as well, so as a corollary to writing about what we know maybe we should be getting familiar with our ignorance. Were we to take Pynchon seriously, a first step when we fail with parables would be to structure the defeat, and to chart the contours of our ignorance." Homeless Blues : post-Pynchon theory — Richard Burmans Webseiten enthalten drei Essays zu Pynchon: .... ‘a remarkably scattered concept’ .... "There are certainly "Kute Korrespondences" (see GR, p. 590) between postmodern ideas and Pynchon’s writing; in fact, he seems to have anticipated much of it before its time. One could even, as for example do McHoul and Wills, see Pynchon’s writing more as an example of contemporary literary theory, rather than as an ‘object text’ for it. (McHoul and Wills, p. 2) There is also, though, in Pynchon’s writing, an understanding of a wider context, and a developing critique of the socio-economic conditions that have helped shape this supposed ‘postmodern’ world they (‘They’?) say we are living in." .... ‘a corporate intelligence’ .... "The lack of personal autonomy in a supposedly ‘free world’ is a constant theme running through Pynchon’s work – the contradiction in the way that capitalism, as it has developed in the West from unstable ‘free market’ to more stable ‘planned economy’, at once relies on the myth of the ‘rugged individualist’, or ‘self-made man’, whilst coming at length to create the conditions within which this kind of person can barely exist at all. Rationalization, the needs of the market, the drive for ever-increased profits, have in fact led to an increasingly organised society, a ‘corporate mentality’, in which even our most whimsical fancies – our jokes, for example (GR, p.581) - seem to be a product of cultural conditioning, put there either to exploit us financially or to nudge us, at a given time, in a particular direction in tune with the needs of the ‘System’." .... "You will want cause and effect" .... "Pynchon’s writing, like that of Deleuze and Guattari, should be seen not in terms of thought mirroring external reality, as is the conventional assumption, but as "lines of intensities, which react upon everyday thought, forming relays between artistic, political and other practices." (see Best and Kellner, p.98) This, while it is not exactly ‘realism’, does however have its roots in social and economic realities rather than in ‘metafictional’ experimentation – that is, writing which is primarily about writing, or "fiction about its own fictionality," as Tony Hilfer puts it. (Hilfer, p.127)" Cashiered — selected texts from the works of Thomas Pynchon: A conversation between two clocks, Dixon at The Rabbi of Prague, Preparing for sodium amytal, Angels, Kekulé’s dream of the Great Serpent. Trespassing Limits: Pynchon’s Irony and the Law of the Excluded Middle — by Francisco Collado-Rodrigueza, Oklahoma City University Law Review Volume 24, Number 3 (1999). "The Story of the Binaries" auf der Law in Popular Culture E-texts–Collection — auf dieser Seite findet man eine große Anzahl hervorragender Aufsätze, nicht nur zu Pynchon. Prosperity is not a substitute for knowing who ‘we really are’ — by Charles Colson, Florida Baptist Witness, April 1, 2004: "For many years, astrophysicists have theorized that one day the universe will cease expanding, decay into an "inert gray blur," and all existence will cease. This theory was cited by writer Thomas Pynchon and others as proof that life is meaningless." Ehrlich gesagt kann ich mich gar nicht daran erinnern, daß das so irgendwo bei Pynchon steht. Lebensläufe, Tötungsarten — Sibylle Cramer zu: Gert Ledig: Stalinorgel, Suhrkamp-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2000. „Ästhetisches Freischärlertum: Mit seiner analytischen Schärfe und erzählerischen Radikalität in der Darstellung des Schreckens schliesst Ledig zu ästhetischen Freischärlern wie John Hawkes, Thomas Pynchon und Claude Simon auf, die das Erzählen von Geschichte in einheits- und zusammenhangsorientierten Formen und damit in Kategorien des Sinns löschen, das Geschehen ins Phantasmagorische verwandeln und, anders freilich als Ledig,die Irrationalität in die Psyche des Erzählers verlegen. So wird der Geschichte ihre Geschichtenförmigkeit abgesprochen, die Geschichtserzählung in der Selbstaufhebung wird zu einem Akt erzählerischen Widerstands. Dabei kommt es, namentlich bei Pynchon, zu erzählten Dialektiken der Aufklärung. Die mit Sorgfalt geschriebenen Nachworte von Volker Hage und Florian Radvan beantworten die Frage des Lesers nach Person und Leben eines Autors, der alles in seiner Macht Stehende tat, um eine Randfigur der Literaturgeschichte zu bleiben. Das freilich hat seine Trilogie verhindert, zu der als dritter der 1957 erschienene Roman «Faustrecht» gehört." Thomas Pynchon and the South Bay — by Garrison Frost, The Aesthetic, The South Bay’s Journal of Arts and Ideas. Thomas Pynchon — auf der Fusionanomaly – Website. The Crying over Lot 49 of Thomas Pynchon’s Letters — By Dwight Garner, Salon Media, 1998: "By making her collection of the reclusive author’s correspondence public, an agent has become the Linda Tripp of the literary world." Smoking Dope with Thomas Pynchon: A Sixties Memoir — by Andrew Gordon. This article appeared in The Vineland Papers: Critical Takes on Pynchon’s Novel, ed. Geoffrey Green, Donald J. Greiner, and Larry McCaffery (Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 1994): 167-78. "Slothrop in Gravity’s Rainbow discovers what many young Americans found out in the late sixties: that our Magical Mystery Tour in the Zone of Vietnam was a love affair with death, that the war never ends, and that your own country is your enemy. We weren’t in Kansas anymore, the Wicked Witch of the West was after us, but there was no Yellow Brick Road and no kindly Wizard to come to the rescue." Many Out of One: Postmoderne und kulturelle Differenz — Grundkurs Amerikanische Literaturgeschichte Kap. 14. A King, a Queen and two Knaves? — An Interview with David Hadju. Thomas Pynchon, Wit, and the Work of the Supernatural — by Elizabeth Jane Wall Hinds, University of Northern Colorado: "Entropy belongs to that set of malicious laws of Pynchon’s malicious, Puritan God, a God that designs not the best but the worst plots for (or against) his Preterite. Pynchon’s interest in this Puritan God is of a piece, of course, with the paranoia about entropy that makes up the fabric of his novels. Predetermination by Divine Hand produces and is produced by the paranoia Pynchon’s characters experience — a matter of reading the world and the Word such that, according to Deborah Madsen, "paranoia is the neurosis most akin to a figural hermeneutic". Such paranoia of reading is indeed the "logical outcome of the Puritan mentality," as Ralph Schroeder puts it. Often, Pynchon’s paranoia is merely grim, producing characters in the last stages of entropy, passively and randomly acting through, not upon, the vast and inhuman systems they inhabit." Pynchon’s Inferno — "A search for the sources of the well-known paranoia expressed in the works of our best-known recent alumnus author" by Charles Hollander [on this server]. Kathryn Hume — die Homepage von Professor Kathryn Hume. Das ganze Leben ist ein Quiz — Heinz Ickstadt — Ein Heulen kommt über den Himmel: Der Weltverschlüssler Thomas Pynchon und seine Romane. DIE WELT, 7. Mai 1997. Intruding Worlds and the Epileptic Word: Pynchon’s Dialogue with the Laws of Surrealism and New Physics — by Kathleen Iudicello, Oklahoma City University Law Review Volume 24, Number 3 (1999). Thomas Pynchon (1937—) — Akihito Ishikawas Pynchon Seite, Teil der American Literature on the Web Site. Elfriedes Fotoalbum — die Homepage von Elfriede Jelinek, Mitübersetzerin von Gravity’s Rainbow. Die erfolgreiche Autorin hat die Aufführung ihrer Stücke nach der Machtübernahme der FPÖ in Österreich untersagt. A few texts in English (On Brecht, I Want to Be Shallow). American Fictions: The Mega-Novel — © 1985 by Frederick R. Karl: on Joseph McElroy’s Women and Men, A Smuggler’s Bible, and Lookout Cartridge, William Gass’s The Tunnel, William Gaddis’s The Recognitions and JR, Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow and John Barth’s Giles Goat-Boy, Letters and The Sotweed Factor. Kindlers Neues Literaturlexikon — Rezension von Dr. Elisabeth Bronfen. Bibliographie. Pynchon’s Deutschland: Zum Problem der Fiktionalisierung von Geschichte — Von Elisabeth Klein (kostenloser pdf-Download nach Registrierung): „(…) "Yes, sort of German, these episodes here," — die Bemerkung des Erzählers läßt sich auf Pynchons Romane generell, vor allem auf Gravity’s Rainbow übertragen. Seine Helden sehen sich fortwährend mit der deutschen Geschichte konfrontiert. Die Untersuchung befaßt sich mit dem komplexen Portrait einer Nation, in der Romantik und Technokratie, Tannhäusers Venusberg und „Metropolis", die „Duineser Elegien" und Hitlers Geheimwaffe V-2 nicht weit voneinander entfernt sind. Für die Auseinandersetzung der sogenannten postmodernen Literatur mit historischem Tatsachenmaterial ist Pynchons Deutschland das Paradigma." Der Nerd im Wissenschaftler — von Uh-Young Kim, TAZ 19.6.2002. „Drei Diskurse pro Minute: Am Wochenende trafen sich Wissenschaftler verschiedener Disziplinen in Köln, um über Thomas Pynchon zu reden. Mythenbildung fand während der Kaffeepausen statt. (…) Pynchonites, die sich sonst nur aus dem Internet kennen, diskutierten die Echtheit eines im japanischen Playboy erschienenen Interviews mit Pynchon zum 11. September (…)." Pinchone — heißt Pynchon so auf russisch? Hier ist ein russischer Aufsatz von Sergej Kuznecov: Analisys of Entropy by Thomas Pynchon. Viewpoint: Who Taught Physics to Thomas Pynchon? — By Robert A. Levy, The American Physical Society, February 2000. Lineland: — Mortality and Mercy on the Internet’s Pynchon-L@Waste.Org, von Jules Siegel und Christine Wexler. Free E-text downloadable. Lineland Review — by Dr Larry Daw of Spermatikos Logos. Lineland Exposes Pynchon–L Flame Wars — Janelle Browns Review des Siegel–Buches aus Wired vom 25. April 1997. The site has disappeared but can be found on the Wayback Machine. The Techngnostic Prophet of Paranoid Literature — by Douglas McDaniel: "Rarified as his airs certainly are, Pynchon-obsessed scholars keep connecting the dots to his shadowy visage with a wealth of imaginative Web sites. A great deal of the digerati seems so Pychonalian, it’s hard to believe he’s not a regular contributing member of the club. His take on the snowballing Age of Information more than thirty years ago read as prescient, even prophetic texts; as proof of his uncanny and overabundant sensitivity; and as a fetishist’s hunger for the latest news, weather and scientific information. He was a techno-savvy geek hacker before William Gibson and Bruce Sterling took over the job, and foreshadowed Philip K. Dick’s postmodern pinup status." Invisible, Inc. — "Ever since Thomas Pynchon became the Great American Novelist, he has fled from his academic admirers. Have they finally caught up with him?" By Scott McLemee, Lingua Franca, Vol. 5, No. 7 - September/October 1995. Norbert Wiener’s View about Information, Language and Society or Technology as applied Social Philosophy — by Elisabeth Menschl. "This article aims to show the actuality of Norbert Wiener’s contributions to contemporary philosophy of science and society." How is Pynchon Related to the Law? — Jay P. Moran untersucht die Frage, was Pynchons Literatur überhaupt mit dem «Gesetz» zu tun hat, so daß eine juristische Fakultät ein Symposium zu dem Thema abhält: "Indeed, to a layperson the topic of this Symposium probably seems odd and to a legal scholar who is unfamiliar with Law and Literature, the topic is probably greeted with a certain degree of skepticism." How to get a blurb from Thomas Pynchon — by Craig Offman: "Start by sending him your novel — it can’t hurt." Thomas Pynchon — information at Free-Definition.com Thomas Pynchon — Eintrag im Net Lexikon Thomas Pynchon im WWW — eine neue, noch kleine deutschsprachige Pynchon–Site. Zitate aus Mason & Dixon sowie einige Links. Valentins Homepage (die mit dem prima Fisch). Pynchon News Service (PNS) Putting a book on the WWW in HTML (however simple) in little pieces that aren’t even in order. Digitalized pieces of Gravity’s Rainbow including the Proverbs for Paranoids, the Mother Conspiracy and much more. Proverbs for Paranoids: Pursuing Pynchon "Thomas Pynchon’s privacy is his own to dispose of at will. That should be respected in as much as it is representative of a right inherent to us all. Beyond that consideration, however, I have an appreciation that I believe others share for the mystery behind the fiction. Like the Poe Toaster, such a mystery only deepens appreciation of the works that come out of it. Each one approaches like cannonshot above a river; it is out of respect for the living, as much as the dead, that we must wait patiently for the river to give up the body." William Pynchon — Founder of Springfield, Massachusetts, Leader, Scholar and Writer — Teil der genealogischen Site von Nora Callahan, der Link führt zur Wayback Machine. Thomas Pynchon Paper Dolls — fun with Tom. Romananfänge — The Crying of Lot 49 und Vineland. B.M.W. Schrapnel’s The Spinach Scones at Crudely’s Pub & Breakfast — So ähnlich wie die Briefe von Wanda Tinasky. Pynchon wird zum fiktionalen Charakter. Ein imaginärer Professor, der mehrere scheinbar zufällige Treffen mit dem zurückgezogensten Autor der literarischen Welt hatte und im Titel den Ursprung des Adenoids in Gravity’s Rainbow enthüllt. Mein Nicholson’s London Guide verzeichnet kein Lokal solchen Namens und diese ‘Enthüllung’ ist wohl ebenso falsch wie der ganze Professor, aber gut gemacht. Thomas Pynchon. Archiv — Verschwörung — Geschichte — Von Bernhard Siegert und Markus Krajewski (Hrsg.), Bd. 15 von [me:dien^i], hg. von Claus Pias, Joseph Vogl und Lorenz Engell, Verlag und Datenbank für Geisteswissenschaften, Weimar, 2003, 136 S., zahlreiche Abbildungen, ISBN: 3-89739-367-0 Pictures of What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon’s Novel Gravity’s Rainbow — das von dem am 16. Juli 1976 in Syracuse (New York) geborenen Künstler Zak Smith geschaffene Werk besteht aus 760 (entsprechend der Seitenzahlen des Romans) einzelnen Zeichnungen, Gemälden und photographischen Arbeiten, die in einer gitterförmigen Struktur versammelt sind: "According to the artist, these images, which range in style and compositional focus, functions as visual equivalents to the book’s episodic narratives and highly digressive structure. The work can be read as one large abstract composition or in a more intimate way as elements of an open dynamic narrative." Whitney Biennial 2004 Catalogue Entry Zak Smith’s Illustrations For Each Page of Gravity’s Rainbow — den Kollegen von The Modern Word ist es zu verdanken, daß dieses Meisterwerk auch online zu bewundern ist. Mein Dank an Zak Smith und Larry Daw. Zak Smith Pictures of What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon’s Novel Gravity’s Rainbow — (Detail) 2004 Mixed media on paper, dimensions variable. Gesamtkunstleben — a Thomas Pynchon Chronology compiled by Karl Stolley, Millikin University, Decatur, Illinois. The Case for Thomas Pynchon — By Joel Stein, Time. The Subculture Pages — Fringeware Thomas Pynchon Biographie, Werke, einige (die üblichen) Links, und eine kurze Literaturliste. Vom Netz genommen, aber in der Wayback Machine enthalten. The Medial Turn. Review of Fiction in the Quantum Universe and Information Multiplicity — by Joseph Tabbi, Pynchon Notes 42-43 (1998): 317-27. The Pyndustry in Warwick — Joseph Tabbi über "Thomas Pynchon: Schizophrenia and Social Control. Papers from the Warwick Conference" (Pynchon Notes 34–35, Spring–Fall 1994). The Letters of Wanda Tinasky — Drei Briefe waren online zu lesen, wurden vom Netz genommen und sind jetzt, dank der Wayback Machine, doch noch dem breiten Publikum zugänglich — war er’s oder war er’s nicht? Wohl eher nicht. Aber nichtsdestotrotz gehören diese Briefe aufgrund der Diskussion, die sie in der Gemeinde hervorgerufen haben, zum Umfeld der Pyndustry. Pynchon selbst hat 1997 in einem (seltenen) Telephoninterview mit CNN die Urheberschaft an den Wanda-Briefen bestritten, die mittlerweile auch enthüllt worden ist. Wanda Tinasky bei Wikipedia Transit of Venus: 6th International Pynchon Conference June 8-11, 2004 — by Vaska Tumir: "Place: The conference will be held at St James Cavalier Centre for Creativity in Valletta, Malta. Registration: There is no registration fee. Come as you are" Program: click on the link Who’s Writing Whose Writing? — Pynchon-List Mitglied Alan Westrope hat einen schönen Aufsatz zu William Gaddis, Jack Green, Thomas Pynchon, Wanda Tinasky und Thomas Hawkins verfaßt (der von Don Foster, der im Februar 1996 Joe Klein als Autor von Primary Colors identifiziert hatte, als Autor der Briefe angegeben wurde und hierfür im September 1998 ein von Pynchon verfaßtes Dankschreiben erhalten hat). Whitney Biennial 2004 Whitney Museum of American Art March 11 to May 30, 2004 — Four images from "Pictures of What Happens on Each Page of Thoms Pynchon’s Novel Gravity Rainbow," by Zak Smith, 755 drawings in various media, each 5 ½ by 4 ½ inches, 2004, Collection of the artist; courtesy Fredericks Freiser Gallery, New York. Wikipedia — der englischsprachige Eintrag. Wikipedia Niederlande — der Thomas Pynchon Eintrag verfaßt vom Webmaster der Vheissu –Seiten Wikipedia — der deutschsprachige Eintrag. The Wine of Life: The Meaning of Drainage — Part of the larger Il y’a un autre monde, le monde du reves…The World of Dreams Site — It’s on the Underground World of Drainage in the World of Literature and includes among other authors and references to The Third Man (Der Dritte Mann) text passages from Gravity’s Rainbow (Episodes 10 and 13) and V. (the fifth chapter). Gravity’s Pull — Tracking Thomas Pynchon through space and time. By John Yewell. Pynchon followed by the postman who presents his driving license. But he’s no paparazzo and I see differences between him and James Bone.

Pynchon Links: V. — The Crying of Lot 49 — Gravity’s Rainbow — Vineland — Mason & Dixon Index Hauptseite Vorwort Die Parabel Dekonstruktion Michael D. Bell Summary Biographie Galerie Literatur Mason & Dixon Richard Fariña Robert Frost Luddism Mason & Dixon Monographien u. Aufsätze Patterns–Muster Proverbs for Paranoids Schweine Slow Learner Soccer Vineland Weblinks Weiterführende Literatur Wernher von Braun The Wizard of Oz Fay Wray The Zero Homepage Page up/Seitenanfang

© Otto Sell – Friday, December 22, 2000
Last update Thursday, June 23, 2005