Proza Americana
-
Upload
petrache-alina -
Category
Documents
-
view
19 -
download
3
Transcript of Proza Americana
Universitatea Spiru HaretFacultatea de Litereprogramul de studii : română – engleză ANUL III, ZIStudent NANU ( PETRACHE) ALINA DANIELA
Proza Americana in secolul XX
Pe baza bibliografiei din Fisa disciplinei, redactati un articol de opt pagini, in limba
engleza, avand urmatoarea tema:
Caracteristici ale postmodernismului in romanul Pynchon, Thomas –Strigarea lotului 49
1
Thomas Pynchon's novel The Crying of Lot 49 embodies the postmodern
exploration so prevalent in American fiction of the mid-20th century. The novel is
often classified as a notable example of postmodern fiction.
In the novel, Pynchon plays upon such postmodern themes as conspiracy
theories, paranoia, the challenge of a central government's authority and
omniscience, underground rebellions staged quietly yet aggressively, the
deterioration of personal relationships, and the general state of confusing decay in
America. He does so through his satirical examination of the subculture of
Southern California. He mixes metaphors and modern media such as television,
radio, and rock-and-roll music as he weaves an intricate and sometimes
disorienting web of lies, intrigue, and self-doubt around the previously pedestrian
life of the main character, Mrs. Oedipa Maas. Oedipa Mass, as she strives to
uncover the secrets behind the death of her recently deceased ex-boyfriend after
being named the executor of his will. Set against the backdrop of Hollywood,
Oedipa follows several dead-end paths to unfold not only the mystery of her ex-
lover's death, but to uncover the the depths of her inner soul. Pynchon
demonstrates that lost causes are the only kind worth fighting for in this novel,
because they lead to self-discovery, even if that discovery is only the realization of
2
all that we don't know and understand. As Oedipa becomes more entwined in the
lies and the hope of discovering truth becomes more vague, she strives even
more to uncover it. There's something terribly heroic about a person who continues
searching for truth despite the realization that such a quest is a lost cause. She
searches not simply to find answers, but to find questions and to realize that her
quest is about the journey and not her destination. This novel is ultimately about a
modernist heroine striving to find her place in a postmodern world.
The novel opens as Oedipa discovers that her ex-boyfriend has died and
has named her executor of his estate. Oedipa does not immediately feel grief over
the loss of her ex-lover; instead, she is preoccupied with the practical matters and
annoyances associated with her new duty as executor. This theme of emotional
detachment and the isolation that separates individuals even in close relationships
is prevalent throughout the novel and is embodied in each of the relationships that
Oedipa forms during her quest. Oedipa leaves her quiet suburban hometown of
Kinneret, California, and her husband, who, in typical Pynchon fashion, is
emotionally damaged himself, to carry out her duties in the peculiar city of San
Narciso, the home of her ex-boyfriend, Pierce Inverarity. Here she meets a range
of strange, disenfranchised, misfit characters. The relationships that Oedipa forms
with these characters help to reveal elements of her personality and represent
symptoms of the dysfunction Pynchon sees as characteristic of the government and
3
culture of America at the time.
Oedipa first stumbles across the Tristero as a result of a strange stamp on one
of her ex-boyfriend's otherwise unremarkable letters. The Tristero is a secret
organization whose origins reach into the 16th century in Europe and whose main
purpose seems to be as an avenue for undermining the postal service, which
represents the government and mainstream America. The Tristero acts as an outlet
for the frustrations, disgust, and distrust of underground America, "a host of
hitherto unnoticed, sometimes alarming, often tremendously pathetic elements
curdling America's cream" (Cowart). As Oedipa becomes obsessed with the
Tristero, the question becomes not how and why the Tristero functions, but
whether it truly exists. Is it an actual organization or is it a conspiracy against
Oedipa orchestrated by the deceased Pierce Inverarity? Or, worst of all, is it a
delusion of Oedipa's paranoid mind, a by-product of the banal suburban life she
has led, much like her husband Much Maas's schizophrenic madness resulting
from his attempt to escape the "unvarying gray sickness" of the cultural
mainstream American life (presented poignantly in the description of Much's
career as a usedcar salesman) through self-medication? The novel, therefore, asks
which is truly the illusion: the underground American culture revealed to Oedipa
through her quest to discover the Tristero or the white suburban middle-class life
she has led up until this point? As the novel comes to a close, this question is left
4
unanswered. We leave Oedipa at the beginning of the auction, aware that she is
being somehow threatened, but unsure of who or what poses this threat--whether it
comes from within Oedipa herself or is, in fact, an outside force.
The story is told by an impersonal third person narrator. He doesn’t seem
to be omniscient, rather limited to what Oedipa sees, but sometimes (rather rare)
the narrator gets an omniscient tone, e.g.: “If she’d thought to check a couple
lines back in the Wharfinger play, Oedipa might have made the connection by
herself.” The narrator is always around Oedipa Maas, like an always-present
ghost. You could almost expect the narrator to be her former lover Pierce
Inverarity, who died and puts Oedipa on her quest.
The reader also doesn’t know, because the narrator doesn’t elaborate
outside Oedipa’s universe (about the plot), but we get the feeling something out
there does exist and it’s probably more than just a practical joke played on
Oedipa. It is however true that “Oedipa’s subjective processes, like those of a
scientist examining submicroscopic behaviour, distort to an indeterminable
degree the phenomena she is trying to observe; she partially creates the patterns
she sees.”
The novel features many characteristics specific to postmodern literature.
For example, consumerism and capitalism are a recurring theme in the novel,
5
which the author challenges and critiques.
Oedipa lives in a society saturated by consumerism. “Waste” is prevalent in
the novel because consumerism is so ubiquitous and new objects are constantly
replacing the old. Pierce Inverarity becomes a key symbol of consumerism and
capitalism because he owns much of the world that Oedipa is thrown into during
the course of the novel. There is even a reference to Pierce “using one of his many
credit cards for a shim” to reach Oedipa. Initially, Oedipa is immersed in this
world of consumerism, living as a suburban housewife who attends Tupperware
parties and cooks dinner for her husband every night. It becomes apparent that
amidst these Tupperware parties and multiple credit cards, Pynchon is creating a
vision of a plastic society. This plastic society is one that is always changing in
hopes of improvement. A critical example of this occurs early on in the text when
the narrator describes Mucho’s feelings about working as a used car salesman:
-he could still never accept the way each owner, each shadow, filed in only to
exchange a dented, malfunctioning version of himself for another, just as
futureless, automotive projection of somebody else’s life .
This quote illustrates the idea that people are always shifting, ignoring the past,
and looking for an improved version of life. This is a very modernist idea, and one
that Pynchon is obviously critiquing because he regards this exchange as
6
“futureless.” Simply because things change in the novel does not imply that things
necessarily evolve. In fact, the more new information that both Oedipa and the
reader receive, the more chaotic the book becomes. Having these new concepts
and conspiracy theories introduced makes it difficult for Oedipa to make sense out
of the increasing chaos:
Oedipa wondered whether at the end of this,…she too might not be left with only
compiled memories of clues, announcements, imitations, but never the central
truth itself, which must always blaze out, destroying its own message irreversibly,
leaving an overexposed blank when the ordinary world came back .
The latter quote demonstrates how new information is constantly
replacing and confusing old information. There is also the idea that the information
is being replaced by “imitations” and not the truth. This results in the destruction
of truth. Pynchon illustrates a common postmodern idea that:
“If we are unable to unify the past, present, and future of the sentence, then we are
similarly unable to unify the past, present and future of our own biographical
experience of psychic life” (Jameson )
Oedipa seems to be suffering from a sort of identity crisis because of her inability
to uncover the past. She fears that she will be unable to remember past events and
therefore she will not know herself. There is the trepidation that “a life’s base lie,
7
rewritten into truth” (Pynchon ) is a reality in this novel.
Although The Crying of Lot 49 seems to have pessimistic tone to it,
throughout the course of novel, Oedipa evolves as a character. Initially, she is an
enclosed housewife, dependant on her husband and living in the suburbs.
However, she evolves into a postmodern heroine. Even if she never discovers the
truth behind WASTE and Trystero, she still triumphs as a character because she
acknowledges the necessity of discarded objects and discarded members of
society. Discarded things become a means of gaining consciousness for her as they
bring her outside of the sheltered suburban life. She becomes her own heroine, no
longer relying on husbands, wealthy boyfriends and insane psychiatrists to save
her. She learns to recognize that the seemingly useless, discarded people and
objects are vital links to a past that modern society is trying to undermine. It is
only by looking to the past that she will be able to look towards the future. Her
character experiences a submergence of consciousness, and it is through the
presence of discarded objects that she is able to evolve into a human being as
opposed to remaining a plastic product of a consumer driven society. Pynchon
devotes a significant part of the book to a "play within a play", a detailed
description of a performance of an imaginary Jacobean revenge play, involving
intrigues between Thurn und Taxis and Tristero. Like the Mousetrap which
Shakespeare placed within Hamlet, the events and atmosphere of The Courier's
8
Tragedy (by "Richard Wharfinger") mirror those in the larger story around them.
As in his earlier novel, V., Pynchon seems to be making a point about human
beings' need for certainty, and their need to invent conspiracy theories to fill the
vacuum in places where there is no certainty. Also, as he had in V., Pynchon laces
the book with original song lyrics and outrageously named characters—e.g.,
Genghis Genghis Cohen, Manny DiPresso. "Mike Fallopian cannot be a real
character's name," protests one reviewer.
Some have hypothesized that Pynchon was influenced by the racial tensions
in southern California that would later turn into riots across the country. Critics
have read the book as both an exemplary postmodern text and an outright parody
of postmodernism. Pynchon himself disparaged this book, writing in 1984, "As is
clear from the up-and-down shape of my learning curve, however, it was too much
to expect that I'd keep on for long in this positive or professional direction. The
next story I wrote was The Crying of Lot 49, which was marketed as a 'novel,' and
in which I seem to have forgotten most of what I thought I'd learned up until t
Bibliography:
Pynchon, Thomas –Strigarea lotului 49, Editura Univers, Bucuresti,, 1999The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon,
9