Becoming Pynchon

“Thorough and insightful ... Becoming Pynchon offers an exemplary instance of the emerging field of genetic narratology. ... Readers are likely to come away from this book feeling that they know this sixty-year-old novel with a new level of depth, both in terms of its journey toward publication and in the counterfactual experience of seeing the storyworld and several characters as they might have existed.” —John K. Young, Resources for American Literary Study

“Becoming Pynchon is studded with genetic gems that glitter and sparkle, and that will delight and often surprise the reader. … [It] is truly a very timely and immensely important addition to Pynchon scholarship … [and] a joy to read.” —Hanjo Berressem, Electronic Book Review

“No one has examined the V. typescript with anything resembling the depth, detail, and keen interpretive eye that Herman and Krafft have here. Unique in the critical landscape, Becoming Pynchon is a first-rate work of scholarship and adds rich textual grounding to a biographical field often driven by anecdote and apocrypha.” —Jeffrey Severs, coeditor of Pynchon’s Against the Day: A Corrupted Pilgrim’s Guide

“Herman and Krafft’s arguments are persuasive, and many of the active, long-standing debates in Pynchon criticism find renewal through their combinatory approach to genetic narratology.” —Thomas Tooley, Rocky Mountain Review

The 1963 publication of Thomas Pynchon’s V. changed the landscape of American fiction. Becoming Pynchon: Genetic Narratology and V. offers a detailed examination of the dramatic transformations that took place as Pynchon’s foundational novel went from typescript to published work. Luc Herman and John M. Krafft develop and deploy a rich theory of genetic narratology to examine the performance of genre in the novel. Pushing back against the current dominance of cognitive narratology, they discuss focalization, character construction, and evocation of consciousness as clues to Pynchon’s developing narratology of historical fiction. Their theoretical interventions offer an important and timely corrective to the field of narratology with a method that brings the author back into the analytical frame.

Herman and Krafft use as their guide the typescript of V. that surfaced in 2001, when it was acquired by the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, as well as Pynchon’s editorial correspondence with Corlies Smith, his first editor at J. B. Lippincott. Becoming Pynchon assembles a comprehensive and unequaled picture of Pynchon’s writing process that will appeal both to Pynchonians and to postmodernism scholars more broadly.

Luc Herman is Professor of Literature in English and Narrative Theory at the University of Antwerp and coauthor of Gravity’s Rainbow, Domination, and Freedom.

John M. Krafft is Professor Emeritus of English at Miami University and was a cofounder and coeditor of Pynchon Notes.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Note on References

 

Introduction        Genetic Narratology, Historical Fiction, and Pynchon’s V.

Chapter 1   Fast Learner: From Typescript to Published Novel

Chapter 2   Focalization and Historiography in the Egypt Chapter

Chapter 3   Dreams and the Evocation of Intersubjective Consciousness in the South-West Africa Chapter

Chapter 4   Character Construction 1: Removing the “Millennium” Chapter

Chapter 5   Character Construction 2: Canceling the Sitcom

Chapter 6   Character Construction 3: Rewriting McClintic Sphere

Chapter 7   Missing Link: The V. Galleys at the Morgan Library and the Harry Ransom Center

Conclusion Stencilization and Pynchon’s Historical Realism

 

Bibliography

Index