The Postmodernist Allegories of Thomas Pynchon

Book excerpt: This study of all the major narrative works of Thomas Pynchon (V, The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, Vineland) and his early fiction is an attempt to describe the narrative mechanisms that produce the uncertainty and ambiguity noted by all of Pynchon's critics. These critics have analyzed the dynamic uncertainties of Pynchon's texts in terms of cybernetics, thermodynamics, Rilke, Weber, Jung - all terms that are offered by the fiction itself. The generic concept of postmodernist allegory allows the critic to speak from a position outside the text and allows us to see that ambiguity and indeterminancy are the effects produced by the way in which the text is constructed.