Unruly narratives: The anarchist dimension in the novels of Thomas Pynchon

This study traces anarchist discourse through the novels of Thomas Pynchon. Not only does Pynchon create specific anarchist and crypto-anarchist characters and agencies, but he also treats with suspicion many state-sponsored institutions that serve to maintain and regulate social order. This anti-authoritarian stance is reproduced on a structural level: Pynchon's formal techniques correspond to an anarchist aesthetic which reflects a sustained skepticism toward efforts to map mastering codes onto the texts.; After examining some of the constitutive features of anarchism in Chapter One, in Chapter Two I assess the political philosophy of Bakunin (particularly his notion of “creative destruction”) as it is given expression in the novel V. Chapter Three, on The Crying of Lot 49, studies Pynchon's treatment of the (re)emergent ideas and ideals of anarchism as they are present in the American New Left and countercultures of the 1960s. Chapter Four explores several anarchist episodes within Gravity's Rainbow, including the transitory utopic potential of an anarchist zone, the Schwarzkommando as a suicidal anarchist war machine, the Counterforce's (ineffectual) anarchist enterprise, and Leni Pokler's “Revolution-in-exile-in-residence.” In Vineland , Pynchon returns again to the 1960s, but from the perspective of the 1980s which allows him to track the trajectory of anarchist activity in the U.S. by evaluating the successes and failures of the counterculture which is also accomplished through an analysis of political and familial genealogies and the links from the 1930s Wobblies to the 1960s countercultures to their residual presence in the 80s. In Mason & Dixon, a treatment of anarchism itself is conspicuously absent; instead, the novel is “pre-revolutionary,” and Chapter Six examines role of the self-reflexive titular characters charged with subdividing the country between slave and “free” states against the backdrop of the formation of the American republic.; While Pynchon frequently invokes a concept of anarchism as a powerful mechanism for social engineering, as a utopic horizon, and as a valued political philosophy, he is also wary of fully endorsing an anarchist position because he recognizes such a position to be open to any number of violent corruptions and betrayals. Pynchon teases out the possibilities that a progressive anarchist stand may proffer, but also makes a serious contribution to anarchist discourse by amplifying and interrogating the flaws inherent in anarchist theory.