The investigation studies Thomas Pynchon’s givenness in terms of three strata of manifestation: the arty, the rhizomatic, and the acosmic. Utilizing a new affective turn implemented within the phenomenological movement by Michel Henry, the study proposes that alongside a rhizomatic mode of accessibility promoting transcendence, investigates the manifestation of this ontological withholding by carrying out the phenomenological reduction established by Edmund Husserl, and by elucidating the phenomenon of immanence in the literary text by means of a theory of auto-affection rooted in—but not reducible to—such methodological reduction. The study proposes that the thematization of anomaly in unconstructed by means of phenomenological moves that uncover strata of phenomenalization that are not apparent on a thematic or merely playful level. These strata, with their promotion of immanence at the expense of transcendence, are found to be complexly affective in nature. The affectivity governing the withholding of transcendence in these strata is discovered to be instrumental in the work’s critique of colonial modes of spatialization, of logocentric modes of transcendence, and of post-Nietzschean modes of affective mastery. Mason & Dixon as a novel that comes toMason & Dixon manifests a withholding of transcendence. The studyMason & Dixon may be Mason & Dixon normal/anomalous dichotomy and a mode of anomaly that is doubly anomalous. Manifested as a nonspatial zone, the doubly anomalous becomes manifested on the hither side of oppositional structures in the novel, such as truth/untruth. The doubly anomalous in Dixon fall short of their telos. Insofar as the ‘acosmic’ occurs within logocentric cartography, it implies an unsettling of every horizonal subject, of nature as the property of man, and of freeplay as the medium of will to power.discloses a tension between a mode of anomaly that is part of aMason &is identified as an ‘acosmic’ zone of affectivity in which mastering intellectualizations

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This doctoral thesis examines literary representations of the Holocaust by Saul Bellow, Thomas Pynchon and Paul Auster, and maps the relation between memory and narrative elicited from literature onto American museums, memorials and monuments. This research argues that the ramifications of the trauma originally felt by Holocaust witnesses resonate in the American collective memory, and its literary and architectural forms, that seeks to remember on behalf of those witnesses. The consequent traumatic disruption of literary and architectural narratives can be identified, using various appropriated psychoanalytical concepts, and Holocaust memory traced as it eludes, and irrupts in, the cultural forms that try to remember it. Establishing the dynamics of collective memory allows the cultural significance of Holocaust remembrance to be investigated, especially in relation to the memories and ethnic identities of survivors that are subsumed by an Americanised version of the past. By way of a conclusion, although this thesis points to the problematisation of historical representation, it also challenges notions of the Holocaust's unrepresentability common to much postmodern thought. It searches for a methodology of memorialisation or at least identifies where blocks to mourning could be removed from the American cultural landscape.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・論文博士 / 博士(人間・環境学) / 乙第13348号 / 論人博第53号 / 新制||人||226(附属図書館) / 2019||論人博||53(吉田南総合図書館) / 京都大学大学院人間・環境学研究科共生人間学専攻 / (主査)教授 水野 尚之, 教授 廣野 由美子, 准教授 小島 基洋, 教授 波戸岡 景太 / 学位規則第4条第2項該当 / Doctor of Human and Environmental Studies / Kyoto University / DGAM

This thesis deals with six texts by two of the best-known contemporary American novelists, namely Paul Auster and Thomas Pynchon. The thesis analyzes three most recent novels by each writer: Invisible, Sunset Park and 4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster and Against the Day, Inherent Vice and Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon. All six novels explore various modes of authenticity - a notion which in each author's work adopts specific mechanisms of establishing ways of existing within the world that are directed towards a critique of the forms of society that try to limit individuals, confine them to prescribed objective categories. Chapters I to IV establish one by one the primary approaches to understanding how authenticity works within individual novels. First two chapters explore Paul Auster's works, and emphasize their portrayal of change as an organizing leitmotif. Chapters III and IV deal with selected works by Thomas Pynchon and analyze their use of entropy and information overload within individual narratives. The final chapter then combines all these notions and provides a comparative analysis and a critical interpretation of all six works against a theoretical and critical framework. The thesis explores the differences between Auster's and Pynchon's approach to authenticity, notions of the subjective or the...

(EN) The present MA thesis focuses on the function of paranoia found in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Pynchon's novel is routinely considered one of the finest pieces of American fiction to emerge after World War II and no discussion of this book can avoid the topic of paranoia. Its usage dates back to the time of Hippocrates and, after centuries of addition, the term paranoia is no longer confined to the medical community. After entering popular usage there is no consensus as to how this term is defined. It now possesses a sort of freedom that Pynchon routinely exploits. Paranoia resists isolation in this text. The specific approach to understanding its function is dependent on three parts. First, the reader must identify the countless forms of paranoia spread throughout Gravity's Rainbow. Next, one must understand why a specific example from the novel represents a form of paranoia in Pynchon's fictional world. Finally, the reader must recognize why an isolated form of paranoia is present and what Pynchon hopes to achieve through its presentation. The paranoia found in Gravity's Rainbow has no fixed meaning. This is a conscious decision on the part of Pynchon and its central goal is to destabilize the entire narrative, which is a central part of paranoia's immense power regularly employed....

Master of Arts / Department of English / Timothy A. Dayton / This thesis project seeks to reconcile the literary criticism of Marxist critic and advocate of literary realism Georg Lukács with the writing of postmodern author Thomas Pynchon in order to validate the continued relevance of Lukácsian aesthetics. Chapter 1 argues that Lukács’ The Historical Novel is not only a valid lens with which to analyze Pynchon’s own historical novel, Mason & Dixon, but that such analysis will yield valuable insight. Chapter 2 illustrates the aesthetic transition from the historical drama to the historical novel by using Lukács’ ideas to explicate The Courier’s Tragedy, a historical drama found within the pages of Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49. Chapter 3 applies Lukács’ ideas on the “world-historical” figure and the “mediocre” hero of the classic historical novel to Mason & Dixon. Chapter 4 asserts that Mason & Dixon enables contemporary readers to experience the novel as what Lukács calls a “prehistory” to the present. This chapter also illustrates how the prehistory of Mason & Dixon anticipates Pynchon’s nonfiction essay “A Journey into the Mind of Watts.” Finally, this chapter demonstrates how Pynchon avoids the pitfall of modernization in Mason & Dixon, which Lukács defines as the dressing up of contemporary crises and psychology in a historical setting. Chapter 5 ties together the work of the previous four chapters and offers conclusions on both what Pynchon teaches us about Lukács, as well as what Lukács helps us to learn about Pynchon.

Belly Laughs: Body Humor in Contemporary American Literature and Film Scholars are more than happy to laugh at but seem somewhat reluctant to discuss body humor, which is perhaps the most neglected form of comedy in recent criticism. In this dissertation, I examine the ways in which contemporary American writers and filmmakers use body humor in their works, not only in moments of so-called "comic relief" but also as a valid way of exploring many of the same issues that postmodern artists typically interrogate in their more somber moments. The writers discussed in this project-Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon, Charles Johnson, and Woody Allen-were chosen for the divergent ways in which they present the body's comic predicament in psychological, metaphysical, and historical situations. The introduction explains the diverse traditions that these artists draw upon and considers how various theoretical approaches can affect our understanding of body humor. The first chapter examines Jewish-American novelist Philip Roth's use of absurd and grotesque body imagery as manifestations of his characters' moral dilemmas. The second chapter looks at how slapstick comedy informs a worldview dominated by paranioa and chaos in Thomas Pynchon's novels. Chapter Three looks at Woody Allen's early films, in which he parodies and revises the slapstick cinematic tradition of artists like Charlie Chaplin and The Marx Brothers. Chapter Four considers African-American writer and cartoonist Charles Johnson's depiction of the ways in which the body's desires and pitfalls complicate the quest for spiritual enlightenment.

Thomas Pynchon’s novel, The Crying of Lot 49, details Oedipa Maas’ quest to unearth a possibly centuries-old clandestine mail system, the Trystero. Oedipa is immersed in notions of sociality and she must navigate the social landscape, searching for clues as to the existence of the social system. In her quest she assumes the role of a detective who searches for meaning, as she looks for clues and questions others who might potentially be privy to the secrets of the Trystero. She necessarily performs the process of symbolic exchange with those she encounters in an attempt at ascertaining some greater meaning within the world that she thinks might lie behind the Trystero. In this, the nature of the circulation of meaning is revealed as a cultural construct.

This thesis approaches Thomas Pynchon's novel, Mason & Dixon, in terms of its narrative structure and sentimental content. Pynchon is generally regarded as a challenging and innovative writer, so narrative is an unsurprising subject for a study of his most recent work; sentimentalism, on the other hand, is a far cry from traditional approaches to his writing. Despite this, however, as I outline in my introduction, sentimentalism has long hovered around the edges of Pynchon's work. In Mason & Dixon it takes a privileged role as the dominating mood of the novel's final section, "Last Transit." This sentimentalism, far from being the retrogressive move that the term might imply, is bound up in a radically reconceived approach to the narrating voice of novelistic discourse, whence comes the unifying feature of my study. In Mason & Dixon, I identify this unity in the novel's referencing of film, long-established as one of Pynchon's major cultural influences. In my first chapter, I outline my approach to sentimentalism and narrative-in the modern and, specifically, modernist novel, as well as in contemporary film. In chapter two I outline my conception of Mason & Dixon's narrator as emulating film's visual representations; in chapter three, I explore this narrator as a "radically underdetermined" identity, who represents, not a linguistically embodied subjectivity, but rather representation as its own agent, as representation itself. In my fourth and final chapter, I examine how this narrator manages the sentimental content of the novel, concentrating on the character of Mason.