Reading McHale reading Pynchon, or, Is Pynchon still a postmodernist?

Abstract

Readings of Thomas Pynchon's novels are central to Brian McHale's theorization of the difference between modernist and postmodernist writing. McHale's argument that the difference resides in a shift from an 'epistemological dominant' to an 'ontological dominant' is, conversely, the foundation of his understanding of Pynchon. However, his reading of Against the Day , which suggests that the novel's use of multiple 'genre mirrors' aims to represent historical 'truth', sits uneasily within this literary-historical narrative. This essay argues that since for McHale postmodernism's ontological plurality ultimately refers back to discursive plurality, there is in fact no contradiction here. It further argues that Pynchon's project of pluralizing what McHale calls 'novelistic ontology' is no longer synonymous with 'de-conditioning' modernist readers: Pynchon's readers have either long since surrendered modernist modes of reading, or are postmodern natives who never practised them in the first place.