Pynchon and the Political

Thomas Pynchon's writing has been widely regarded as an exemplary form of postmodern fiction. It is characterized as genre-defying and enigmatic as a series of complex and esoteric language games. This study attempts to demonstrate however that an oblique yet compelling sense of the political Pynchon disappears all too easily under the mantle of postmodernity. Innovative and unsettling discussions of freedom war labour poverty community democracy and totalitarianism are passed over in favour of constrictive scientific metaphors and theoretical play. Against this current this study analyses Pynchon's fiction in terms of its radical dimension showing how it points to new directions in the relationship between the political and the aesthetic.