To Cry from Within or Without? Pynchon and the Modern – Postmodern Divide.

Abstract

This article interrogates the demarcation of modern and postmodern literature within the context of a critical and inter-textual reading of Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 . Approaching Pynchon’s text from what is essentially a formalist perspective, this reading readdresses the question as to whether or not The Crying of Lot 49 breaks through to a mode of fiction beyond modernism itself. Critics such as Brain McHale have forwarded The Crying of Lot 49 as a paradigmatic late modernist work; a work that does not break through to a mode of fiction beyond underlying epistemological presuppositions. Via a comparative reading that draws on the work of Paul Auster, Bret Easton Ellis et al , it is argued herein that McHale’s otherwise scholarly reading is somewhat myopic. In short, it is argued that although Pynchon’s heroine is driven by an epistemological agenda, the text-scape she inhabits is postmodern.