The novels and literary endeavors of Thomas Pynchon are often seen as difficult, perhaps even more so than those of James Joyce, the modernist king of complex text. Because of this, Pynchon's work is rarely read formally, even in the academic setting of the university. However, unlike Joyce, who, in a search of the MLA index, returns 6850 articles, Pynchon has been practically ignored by the critical tradition he ought to have initiated. Granted he is a much more recent writer and, perhaps, has not yet amassed the sort of attention he will ultimately gather. With these factors in mind, I write this thesis on his work in order to try to introduce him into the proverbial collegiate canon just a bit more.

Though it may appear to verge on the traditionally literary from time to time, this is a Comparative History of Ideas thesis, and is written for this program. I write for someone like myself, with a varied range of knowledge into both traditional "English major" topics and those more non-traditional ones that have become canonized in the University of Washingtonís CHID department. Though this thesis is designed for someone who has read some of Pynchon's works, most helpfully Gravity's Rainbow itself, the themes of literary criticism and ways of reading invoked in this thesis will speak to many more readers than that, and hopefully engage them in a desire to read Pynchon for the very reasons I outline as being useful to the academic. Charles Clerc, in the introduction to his (relatively) early anthology of criticism on Pynchon writes that, "(i)t would be unreasonable to expect that any single novel could provide sufficient materials for a liberal education, but certainly Gravity's Rainbow comes closer to that goal than any other work of fiction produced in America." This quote is easily transferable from the single book to the entirety of the body of Pynchon's work (with this single book as the exemplar here in this thesis) and from a liberal education to a (post)modern, Comparative History of Ideas education, for it, above all, appeals to the sorts of concerns with which we, as a department, seem most concerned.

In fact, this thesis is ultimately, beyond its superficial literary goals, written with the intent of sparking an interest within the CHID department in Pynchon, in his works as uniquely CHID-esque. Though perhaps not explicitly stated within the body of the thesis itself, the reader who has associations with CHID ought to read this thesis with this concept in the back of her mind. She is called upon to ask the constant CHID values-based questions of: How does Pynchon reflect CHID and its perceived values? How does he ultimately fit into the corpus of work we recognize as being critically provocative and thus worthy of parallel investigation?

Only when the individual has explored these sorts of questions can a true reading of this thesis be attained. I seek to work on more than one level. Superficially, this may appear to be a standard literary analysis paper exploring a single author and his influences upon and within the postmodernist tradition. However, on another level, I seek to invite the reader to read this text as a gateway to the work of Pynchon and its bearing on life in the 21^st century more generally, and within the University of Washington's CHID department specifically.

Respectfully submitted this 18^th day of March 2002 to Professor Gary Handwerk in completion of the requirements for Comparative History of Ideas 491 and 492 and partial completion of the Comparative History of Ideas major.

Cara Elisabeth Ogburn

Each will have his personal Rocket.

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon is a man who, following his early fame in writing as a college student at Cornell, had a brief period of rapid textual production. During this time, he published his first three books and a number of short stories. Since then (over twenty-five years ago), however, he has veritably escaped from the public eye. From time to time he has reemerged, to write liner notes for a friendís album, to publish two novels, but just as quickly he returns to his hidden state. The anonymous state he maintains resists the reader's popular urge to read his convoluted works by way of his own biography or based on what he has said about them. He has said very little, if anything about them or their meanings, and thus the reader is left to find new strategies for fictional analysis of these texts.

The critical tradition surrounding Pynchon has been one of varied strength. A burst of explorations into his work around the time of the publication of Gravity's Rainbow stayed strong until only a few years after the book's receipt (and Pynchon's consequent refusal) of the National Book award. However, perhaps due in part to Pynchonís own reclusiveness and lack of prolific writing since the publication of Gravityís Rainbow (during the ten years prior he wrote and published three books: V., The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow), very few literary critics and theorists have dealt with Pynchon in a more than passing sense in the past twenty years.

Pynchon asks to be read theoretically. In Gravity's Rainbow he creates a framework by which the reader must ask critical questions in order to have any comprehension of the text. In this the text itself is a theoretical body. The general critical school by which a reader is forced to read Pynchon's novel is through a lens of Reader Response Criticism.

The Reader Response Criticism school is nicely outlined by Jane Tompkins in her introduction to her anthology of criticisms of the sort. She outlines each thinker within this realm with regard to the fundamental principles that make them fit this genre as well as the ways in which they differ from one another. She shows examples from a number of different theoretical standpoints that all seem to focus on the reader as a potential site of literary meaningís construction.

From this basic conceptual idea, one can see that Pynchon surely seems to write in order to fit this model, and, at the same time, to challenge it in many ways. Is Pynchon a Reader Response theorist himself? This question remains to be definitively determined, but it is clear to see that he has some of the main issues of the role of a reader in mind as he crafts his novels. In fact, he may have his own version of Reader Response Theory brewing behind the fictional text the reader may see on the page.

Few studies have been done on Pynchonís connection specifically to the Reader Response Criticism tradition. Friedrich Arichís article for Pynchon Notes, a periodical devoted to Pynchon studies, "Dogsical Reading: Gravity's Rainbow's Reversals and Reader Response Criticism," makes the connection between Pynchonís use of Pavlovian conditioning outwardly in the novel and Pynchonís own conditioning of his reader. Arich identifies these conditioning references to be emblematic of the process of reading. Whether this is reading in general or specifically the reading of Pynchon is unknown.

The idea of Pavlovian conditioning is teleological; it proceeds from some state of unconditioned behavior to that of a specific sort of conditioned behavior. This seems contrary to what Pynchon is doing to individualize the reader. In fact, it seems contrary to the school of Reader Response Criticism, which relies on the individuality of the reader for its fuel. Arich redefines this though, by saying that, "(i)t does not rely on the spatial dimension of the social--many interconnected readers simultaneously present--but rather stands up for a solitary, and therefore necessarily temporal alternative." This alternative becomes the observer-reader. Thus, each reader has her own "conditioning program" set out for her in the novel. The novel contains infinite numbers of these programs, all designed to form the reader into an observer and disciple of Pynchon's potential philosophies. This stance may help to assuage some of the readerís incapability to read this sort of complex text. To learn, or be trained, to be an observer may become a tool, in the readerís arsenal of postmodern reading techniques.

In the school of Reader Response Theory it is acceptable that many different theoretical routes are taken from the same basic root. This school's root of belief is that textual meaning is somehow, in part or fully, made by the reader or in his reading of the text. For Pynchon's specific version of this theory, the reader is the only site of this meaning, if it is to exist at all.

For Pynchon, meaning is found only in the space between the reader and the text at the instant of reading. Hence the text can be differently read each time it is taken up. With more or different life experience the reader is a different, a new reader who will have a new reading of the text in hand. It is perhaps even doubtful that the reader ever has a full grasp on her own reading as this is happening, but only of the end result reading.

Thus Pynchon allows for a wider framework of possible "good" readings. One could find nearly any meaning possible in these numerous densely crafted pages. Pynchon embraces ideas from a variety of interpretive realms, from science to literature to the commonplace mundanity of provincial life.

This multiplicity of readings allowable might seem to lead this theory into a realm of complete relativism or completely deconstuctable meaninglessness, however it is quite the opposite. By locating meaning in his own individualized reading, the reader is constricted to his or her own social and cultural sphere. He cannot read a principle of Bantu religion into the text if he knows nothing about Bantu religion. The validity or quality of a reading is only valid or valued in the culture in which it is formed. Inasmuch as each person is a social construct, so is his reading of a text.

These socially constructed value frameworks are what Pynchon depends upon for the crux of his theoretical work here. He exploits the permanence of these to his own benefit as he plays with their boundaries. He opens the framework of potential readings, thus pressing these constructed critical frameworks to their limits.

Readings are equally supported and refutable in Pynchon's text by the actual textual evidence he gives the readers. There is deliberate inconsistency and ambiguity as to what really happens in the novel. This lends this novel to be read interpretively and equally well in each interpretation. Pynchon himself writes, "its text is theirs to permute and combine into new revelations, always unfolding...(e)ach will have his personal rocket." He gives his text to the readers to plunder for the meaning that shall act as their own personal rocket.

One Pynchonean thematic trope that may symbolically indicate an awareness of the reader and her role in the creation of the text is the idea of Maxwell's Demon. In both Gravity's Rainbow and The Crying of Lot 49 this concept is used in reference by Pynchon. This idea was originally developed by James Clerk Maxwell a 19^th century British physicist. In this theory, there is an imaginary creature, a demon, who sorts hot and cold molecules without expending energy. This thus decreases entropy, another of Pynchon's imagerial obsessions, therefore violating the second law of thermodynamics. This problematic thought experiment is perfect for Pynchon's thematic purposes. In theoretical terms, the demon can in many ways, be equated with the reader herself. Pynchon's reader must be a sorting demon. She must identify what is and is not possible, eliminating, or sorting away, aspects of plot she does not choose to be part of the reality of the text. This construction of the text by the reader is essential to how this idea relates to Reader Response Theory.

These theoretical inklings or tendencies within Pynchon's text serve as clues that this is not a text to be taken lightly. Pynchon has an agenda, though this is not presented outwardly. Rather, the reader comes to subscribe himself to this mode of thought through being subjected to a set of experiences of reading that teach him how he ought to be reading. And how he ought to be reading is the site of Pynchon's opinion. This sets Pynchon at the forefront of the postmodern text-as-theory movement.

This thesis seeks to portray Pynchon as modeling the postmodernist reading. By first describing the reading experience found within his exemplary novel, Gravity's Rainbow, and then making connections between this text and a number of typically postmodern theoretical patterns, one can see how Pynchon fits into this legacy. From this his importance will be drawn and shown as useful to the modern reader both within and outside of the academic setting.

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One's experience of reading Gravity's Rainbow, or any of Pynchon's novels for that matter, can be somewhat disturbing. Like the high modernists, Pynchon's prose is difficult to follow, for it does not cohere to the traditional notions of plot or character with which most readers are familiar and upon which they rely in order to make meaning in a text. In fact, as George Levine realizes, "(m)ore important than the possible resolution of the(se) quests is the disorientation and almost visceral disturbance that come of being forced into them." The importance of Pynchon's fiction lies not in the story he proposes to "tell" us, but in the way in which we must navigate our own way through this sort of a text.

Gravity's Rainbow disorients. The bare-bones facts about this novel astound and befuddle the potential reader. It has, as Molly Hite has counted, "760 pages, at least 300 individualized characters, and a tangle of plots so thoroughly contaminated by the naturalizing conventions of dream, hallucination, fantasy, film, theater and interpolated texts that it is nearly impossible to say even in a provisional way, what happens in it." This lack of ease in providing a book-jacket summary makes the reader uneasy. When someone asks of you, the reader, "Well, what is Gravity's Rainbow about?" there is no easy answer. A short answer seems to deny much of the plot and character development, but a more detailed answer involves hours of summary.

On top of the sheer numbers involved in reading Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon's allusive nature is also a problem to the reader. The references dropped by Pynchon range from scientific obscurities to the poetry of Rainier Maria Rilke to untranslated use of a historical, African tribal language. The reader feels in some ways compelled to learn what each refers to. In fact, a near industry has been made of writing encyclopedic "guides" to Pynchon's texts that catalogue and explicate each reference. Even these, though, vary in their thoroughness, as even a team of editors cannot always identify every reference, let alone explain its full range of meaning.

On page 13 of Gravityís Rainbow Pynchon writes, across the transition between two unadulterated paragraphs,

To read this section of text, a reader must, possibly, know who Eugene Sue is and probably that he wrote "The Wandering Jew," that Dacoit was a murderous Indian robber and that "Fuzzy-Wuzzies" is a term used to refer to the native warriors of Sudan. These references are cited in Fowler's A Reader's Guide to Gravityís Rainbow. However, "dracunculiasis" and "Oriental sore" are not cited. Are these illnesses not important? Are they not real outside of the reality of the novel? The guidebook seems to code Pynchon's text almost further into inaccessibility, answering fewer questions than it raises. This attempt to make reading Pynchon easier has, thus, failed, for it has taken the text and added a new layer of significance and meaning that is in no way authorized by Pynchon. Whether he would approve of this further masking of his text is debatable.

Despite the impossibilities, this goal of "getting" the references seems contrary to the goal Pynchon must have had in mind when writing these texts in this manner. He must have known that no one person would ever be able to "get" every reference, unless of course they had borrowed Pynchon's own well-rounded mind. This situation provides a new facetization to how Pynchon is creating his own set of significances for his texts.

This allusiveness of the text forces the reader to adapt. With every set of understandings made from a different set of understood references, each reader's reading is individuated. And this seems to be Pynchon's goal above all, for despite the games played in making the reader quest for a connection to an allusion, he can only ever hope for each reader to ultimately have their own personal set of readings.

In this act of reading signs, the reader becomes a hermeneuticist. Like Oedipa Maas, the "heroine" of The Crying of Lot 49 and Tyrone Slothrop, Gravity's Rainbow's protagonist-"hero", the reader must interpret signs. Maas and Slothrop present ideas, their own interpretations of the signs around them. The reader, in turn, must determine if these are valid, if they work. To "work," for each of Pynchon's readers, may even mean many different things. Ultimately it comes down to whether this theory seems plausible or a realistic option for what the reader may see the author as trying to say, as trying to have "happen" in the novel. The very presentation of these sorts of theories and the way in which these characters present them, through their own mental analysis of them, force the reader not to be a passive observer, but to get into them and actively do analytic work, using what have been given as potential truths throughout the novel.

Through this sort of manipulation of the reader, Pynchon trains his reader to second-guess himself. This is done in an almost Pavlovian fashion, as is appropriate to the themes of the novel, which has a whole subtext of conditioning and deconditioning language running throughout. Just when the reader thinks he has stumbled upon a theory for the connections between things, Pynchon pulls the rug out from under him.

The connectedness of Pynchon's story is problematic to the reader as well as to the interpreting character, for everything seems to be connected, but nothing actually proves to be so. The paranoia of this situation permeates the protagonist's consciousness; one of Pynchon's favorite themes is that of paranoia. But even the reader becomes caught up in this theme when she tries to construct either a plot structure or meaning for a Pynchon text. Pynchon trains his readers to be paranoid. Connectedness itself does not necessarily lead to paranoia, but for Pynchon it does, for the connections are never again able to be solidly made. The reader is left feeling insecure about this reading and his own correctness in making it in the first place.

What is the purpose of having a paranoid reader? Pynchon likes paranoids; in all of his novels he plays with this idea. This is not clinical paranoia, but a unique Pynchonean paranoia that allows for advancement of the self through extreme self-awareness. This, on one hand, connects to the modernist ideal of self-reflexivity. On the other, perhaps this is his answer to the deconstructionist dilemma of deconstructing oneself into nihilism. If one develops an awareness of how one may be reading something based on oneís own contextuality, a reader can be more aware of how this text is actually affecting them. However, a hyper-awareness may lead one to examine each aspect of their lives, not just those with contextual relevance. And this is the sort of paranoia Pynchon seeks to evoke, a doubting of one's own self and one's own decisions.

And certainly, beyond the goal of having a reader end up in a state of permanent paranoia, Pynchon seeks to have each readerís own connections be individualized. No one could possibly come up with the same hare-brained concept of the plotting going on behind the story's superficial occurrences. This is enforced by the idea that each reader will make her own meaning out of the allusions within the text. Pynchon is surely trying to create an individual, subjective reading for each potential reader of his text.

Beyond this idea of an individualized, subjective reading, a few general themes seem to hold true for the Gravity's Rainbow reader. The first part (of four) seems to be the most difficult, the most disorienting, with little logical connection between its sections and a sense of being in the middle of some text that ahs been going on for a while. In a sense this is just the way Pynchon wants the reader to feel. The war has been going on for a while, and, as a larger scene he seeks to portray, humanity has been in cultural existence for even longer. Pynchon does not seek to explicate one plot of one sort of event (with a distinct beginning, middle and end) but an on-going situation that began before the book begins and extends past the book's end.

The second section, on the other hand, is much more cohesive. The narrative is much more linear, strays from one plot-line less often and is written in a more traditional style. However, this is deceiving, or it does not, in fact, behave in the same way a "traditional" text might. Many of Pynchon's writing trends continue in this section. This masking of the tools Pynchon uses in his text makes this a subversive portion of the text. The reader is easily led on Pynchon's path. No longer is she feeling the disorientation of the first part, but she feels more at ease, more able to use her traditional reading tools by which she is comfortable navigating. This is tricky, for Pynchon surely does not want to create a new textual format and then return to a previous, less-evolved one. Rather this is a part of his disorientation. He seeks to make the reader comfortable and confident in her connection-finding skills so that he can then, in part three, problematize these theories and, in part four, turn them completely upside down. This strategy works just the way Brian McHale outlines the reader must do in each scene. The reader must construct a reality, deconstruct it and then reconstruct it.

To explicate that construction in this section, an example of one reader's close reading of a section of the text is necessary here. The first section of this second part ("Un Perm' au Casino de Hermann Goering") reintroduces the book's "protagonist," Tyrone Slothrop, in his new locale. He has been sent away from London (since they suspect his erections to be causing Blitz rocket hits) and to a remote casino on the continent. He will later go further (in the third part, eponymously titled) "In the Zone" to explore these connections between himself and the V-2 rocket, but first he must learn of the plotting that seemingly surrounds him.

In this first part the reader sees Slothrop the morning after his arrival at this reclaimed Casino. There are girls for his enjoyment and all seems well as Slothrop, Bloat and Mucker-Maffick go to the seashore with them for breakfast. However, once they get to the beach, Slothrop finds he must save yet another attractive girl from a gigantic octopus. His heroism triumphs and he returns to the Casino with said girl in tow.

The underlying plot under this basic action is, however, that Slothrop has been set up. The reader learns this for sure later in the book, when the Octopus Grigori is seen to be an animal under a certain sort of Pavlovian conditioning. There is foreshadowing as to this at the time of the incident as well, as through the words Pynchon uses in the earlier stages of the section when Bloat is seen as having "something about the way he talks to Slothrop, patronizing? Maybe nervous..." The implication here us that the narrator, who is only somewhat privileged at this point, senses something odd about the way Bloat and Mucker-Maffick are acting.

Slothrop himself even begins to feel this is unreal, or farcical as he thinks Bloatís having a crab handy to be just a bit too eat. He says to Bloat, somewhat suspiciously, "Saaay--where'd you get that crab?" and, as the narrator notes, "The conniving around him now he feels instantly, in his heart." At the time of the reading of this scene, Slothrop seems to be a bit overly concerned with this. However, later it is revealed to be true, that this was not a "real" scene, that it was not occurring as it would be simply perceived; here is more going on behind what one could simply observe.

Again the common Pynchonean idea of paranoia is conjured up in this scene, both subtly, in the mind of the reader who sees Slothrop as over-reacting, and in the text itself. This tendency of Slothrop is attributed to his status as an American and as a descendent of the Puritans; "it's a Puritan reflex of seeking other orders behind the visible, also known as paranoia." Yes, Pynchon's text does seem to argue that paranoia is a peculiarly American quality, one that comes from a Puritan framework. And this does make sense, as Puritanism does call upon the believer to have faith in an order that he cannot see or know factually to exist. Many other remnants of Puritanism have stayed with the American culture (a striving for individuality, a certain work ethic) why should one assume this one to have not?

Pynchon, as usual, uses a unique narrative stance that shifts from one point to another as well as varying in the interiority of the narrator throughout the scene. This inconsistency is not particularly distracting in this scene as other things, such as the ridiculousness of the octopus attack are much more heightened in the reader's mind. However, the narrative stance here is interesting, as it fades in and out of Slothrop, and really only Slothrop's mind. Neither the reader nor Slothrop is told that this is all a hoax, though others on the beach know this. Pynchon chooses to keep his readers in the same boat as Slothrop so that they too can feel this paranoia.

Pynchon also follows his traditional style of making many allusions. These are uniquely observed by each reader and, while this reader may have noted something the "guidebook" did not, she surely did not catch each faceted allusion of Pynchon's insertion. As is typical he inserts an art-related allusion. Tantivy Mucker-Maffick, regarding the idea of going out to the sea, sur la plage, comments, "(O)h, it sounds like a painting. Something by an Impressionist. A Fauve. Full of light . . . ." This reference to twentieth century French art requires the reader to have an awareness of these schools of art. The descriptor "full of light" alone surely does not distinguish these two schools from any other genre of art known to be "full of light." Pynchon relies on the reader's own erudition, her own knowledge of modern art, to fill out this idea.

This also is impacted by the reader's discovery that the appositive of "(a) Fauve" as standing in for "an Impressionist" is not the most equal comparison. Fauvism was significantly more radical than Impressionism in its use of broad brushstrokes and vibrant color. The Impressionists, on the other hand, were an earlier group, comparatively more reserved though their style was considered revolutionary as well. This inconsistency of Tantivy's own language develops the reader's idea of his character. Evidently, he is not the most schooled in genres of art. However, this development cannot be made in the mind of a reader who has no exposure to either school or even just one, for this mistake would not be apparent.

Pynchon's literary references continue as he makes a well-veiled reference to Eugene Ionesco's play, La Cantatrice Chauve. Tantivy Mucker-Maffick says, to one of the French dancers, "J'ai deux amis, aussi, by an odd coincidence. Par un bizarre coincidence, or something, oui?" This recalls Ionesco's M. and Mme. Martin who do not realize they are married as they find coincidence after coincidence to be "curious," "bizarre" and "strange." The indication here is two-fold. In Ionesco's play, this repetitiveness and simplicity of language is mocking the texts by which students learn foreign languages. Pynchon's use of this reference indicates a certain quality of Tantivy's spoken French. Ionesco is also, however, mocking the seriousness of drawing-room dramas. This has even more import for Pynchon as this reference can be seen to indicate the falsity and performative aspect of Slothrop's own situation and the ridiculous melodrama lent to it by the extremity of this situation.

The relation of this scene to Ionesco's play is interesting, for Ionesco was considered to be an avant-garde playwright. However, he also wrote that once something is named as being "avant-garde" it can no longer be such, as something else will have taken its place. To say that Pynchon is "modernist" or postmodernist" then is problematic, for, if critics continue to label the newest art forms, what sorts of labels will critics be left with?

Beyond simply this issue of naming, the general fitting of Pynchonís novels into the postmodernist notion of text has been a murky one. This is due in part to the murkiness of postmodernism itself. It has no set definition and can be defined most safely, it seems, by its name, as in that the text is question is post-modern, falling temporally after the modern. The exact relation between the modern and postmodern is unclear and thus is the problem of placing a text in the latter category.

Pynchon's own placement into this system is uncertain. As Brian McHale denotes repeatedly, he encourages a traditional modern reading, a reading by traditional, tested modes of modernist thought, but seems to subvert it, thus defining his own brand of postmodernism. However intentional, the writing of Thomas Pynchon does seem to align itself with the readings called for by a number of poststructuralist and postmodern theorists. The absoluteness of this alignment may, in fact, make Pynchon's works themselves a theoretical body of work, rather than merely a fictional text to be looked at via these ways of reading. An analysis of Pynchon in relation to these theories is, thus, essential to one's understanding of Pynchon in general. For the purposes of this thesis, the body of this contextual work must, necessarily, be narrowed. Therefore, Pynchon's work will be examined in relation to the theories of Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, two of the preeminent postmodern theorists to whose critical viewpoints Pynchon's work seems best able to connect. These two play off one another and connect nicely and without contradiction to the general ideas of Reader Response Theory, by which it has already been determined one must read Pynchon's theoretical perspective. First, however, it seems necessary to critically align Gravity's Rainbow as being a potential part of the postmodernist tradition itself and not just as a remnant modernist text.

Brian McHale identifies, for the first time in the Pynchonean critical tradition, a placement for Pynchon in regard to his status as a modern or postmodern author. He first defines the modern, and then posits that Pynchon almost parodies the conventions of a modern reading, deliberately using them as markers by which to befuddle the reader. The appearance of Gravity's Rainbow is modernist in many of its assumptions of form, but this is a guise so as to force the reader to play his game. This act in and of itself makes Pynchon postmodern, McHale concludes, for he directly follows the tradition and patterns set forth by the moderns.

McHale finds modern writing to fit three categories to which readers have become accustomed. The text is often self-conscious, self-critical, self-reflective. It problematizes the 'game' of fiction. And, finally, it resists and subverts the reader's attempts to read it by traditional reading modes. These qualities of these texts make the modern text a 'writerly' one. It is almost an exercise, for a writer, in training one's readers.

In contrast to this writerliness, McHale sees Pynchon's texts to be 'readerly.' That is, that they are first, seemingly, coded so that the reader is given the authority to try and read by these now well learned modernist strategies of reading, but that he has coded it yet again so that even this is subverted. As Pynchon himself writes, "thus decoding the Text, thus coding, recoding, redecoding the holy Text." This "double coding" is a key aspect of Pynchon's writing, be it in Gravity's Rainbow or in any of his other novels. This detaches the reader from the text and, at the same time, incorporates him and his own perspectivalism further into his reading of it, thus echoing the personalized reading he calls for in a Reader Response Theory sense. This doubling makes Pynchon's text seem even more intricate and unapproachable.

In his essay, "The Use of Codes in The Crying of Lot 49 " in Harold Bloom's influential anthology of Pynchonean criticism, Frank Kermode writes:

Though he speaks of The Crying of Lot 49, Kermode's point here is well taken in regard to Gravity's Rainbow as well as much of postmodern literature and, if extended, to the role of the critic in any reading endeavor. The key implication here is that the critic is nomic, a namer. She names that which she identifies and recognizes. She cannot name that which she does not see. And thus each critic will have a different set of names and different names for things. In Gravity's Rainbow, this is crucial to the way in which one must read this text. Codes are interpretable. By forcing the reader and critic to de-code his text twice, Pynchon allows for a whole matrix of variable interpretations. This concept is definitive of Pynchonís writing within the postmodern realm.

McHale categorizes the modern as oppositional to the postmodern by two definitive sets of contrastive ways of seeing literary models. He defines modernism first as being a text that causes the reader to reconstruct the elements of the world of the novel through the mediation of a character. This results in some intrinsic distrust of the text's verity, for the character-as-narrator is human (supposedly) and, in that, somewhat flawed. This is an epistemological concern, he avers, for we are put in a quandary of knowledge and its bearing on reality.

In Pynchon's text, on the other hand, it is found that the reality itself is to be distrusted. Because one is only given information through the eyes of certain types of narrators, it is distrusted that this event is even happening, whether it is even a part of reality. This is done through the use of hallucination and fantasy. Pynchon's characters are either certifiably crazy (either explicitly in the novel, or through the readerís observation of their actions and modes of expression), usually paranoid, or on some sort of hallucinatory drug. Thus, the reality shown is, at best, a provisional one, immediately prone to recasting and rejection the moment it is found to be fantastical.

This same quality of the modern text forces the reader himself to construct a reality. The reader must take the information transmitted through the character and recreate what is really going in his own mind. This lack of surety can lead each reader to develop a truth that works for him or her as an individual, thus calling for reader participation in the creation or formation of textual meaning.

For Pynchon's text, however, this constructivist nature of reading is even further faceted and personalized. When reading Gravity's Rainbow, one cannot simply reconstruct a feasible reality. Instead, it must be constructed and then torn down, deconstructed and then, later, reconstructed as one is given more and more new information, and, crucially, continue this process forever. This vicious cycle is not a problem of Pynchon, but a problematic. Pynchon is creating this new format by which his readers must read.

McHale cites Pynchon's deconstructive clues as falling into three (and possibly four) categories. The first is a warning of its lack of reality well prior to the incident itself, as is the case when one sees that someone on a drug such as the ever-present Oneirine is about to have a hallucination. Second, this knowledge can also be found after the event occurs as is the case with Pokler's incest scene with his supposed daughter Ilse. After he has painted this terribly graphic scene, Pokler thinks, "No." This is an interesting way of going about this "telling" the reader that it is unreal. There is a certain duality present in this statement as well. Perhaps it is easier, or more significant, to read this as a moral statement, that Pokler, despite his fantasies about his daughter, does not act on them or sees them as wrong. Certainly though, he does not act on these ideas, but many critics have skipped over the two-letter disclaimer Pynchon writes here and placed this incident under the real events of the novel.

This problematic is even more heightened in Pynchon's other ways of deconstructing his own newly created realities. He also does this through internal contradictions. An example of this can be found with Pig Bodine and Roger Mexico's shared hallucinatory dream of being held captive and prepared for consumption. Because the reader learns from the surrounding "reality" that they have not, in any way been cooked, it is apparent that this is a fantastic dream that, oddly, they shared. A fourth way Pynchon does this is by a similar sort of contradiction that occurs after the incident is over. For example, Mrs. Quoad of the "Disgusting English Candy Drill" perhaps reappears later in the novel. This idea is thwarted however, when we learn that the particularities of her condition make her certainly a different Mrs. Quoad, if not a figmentary character that is not of any real reality of the novel.

This plethora of methods for going about confusing the reader is a deliberate act on the part of Pynchon. What does it mean that the readers are so easily confused as to what is and is not real, even when it is, in fact, laid out for us textually? Here, Pynchon is playing a literary game. This is precisely the playful mood he wants to lend to his text. The very ontological uncertainty felt by the reader is that which he desires to be comprehended as intrinsic to the nature of the world of his novel. In the world of Gravity's Rainbow, nothing is surely real. If even professional academic critics, with their well-developed arsenals of reading techniques, can mis-read Pynchon, it shows a number of things about the nature of this text. One, it is not a text that privileges the erudite. It is often better to not know anything about what Pynchon speaks, for he does not always mean things to be as they might be in the real world. He gives the reader all they need to deal with the text as he needs them to. It is certainly impossible, however to have no prior knowledge before picking up this text. And this is played upon by Pynchon as well; an ignorant reader would have a very boring reading of Gravity's Rainbow. Therefore, Pynchon's ideal reader is not the naÔve reader, but Everyreader. The book is written to allow for individualized readings, in fact, to encourage a multiplicity of individualized readings. This style, contrary to how it might appear, does not fail here because of this fact of potential mis-reading; it succeeds even better at making the artistic statement Pynchon strives for.

The second way that McHale looks at the definition between the modern and postmodern of Pynchon is through the way a transition between two narrative perspectives is presented. In modern writing, specifically that of Virginia Woolf, this tends to be done through the use of a physical item or description outside the realm of either narratorís mind. This "thing" is then a place of transference, a place that is accessible to both minds and, thus, is a logical sort of transition point, though potentially confusing to the unsuspecting reader. Traditionally this transfer follows the same path of temporal continuity. It usually moves from past to present as does the narrative (overall). Occasionally, in Proust for famous example, an object causes one to return to a past state, a past memory, a past self. McHale calls this method of transference "triangulation," for the connection is made between two people or things via a momentary third.

In Pynchon's writing, however, once again a paradigm is overturned. Pynchon plays with this idea of changing narrative stances, but it is often without regard for a temporal continuity. Pynchon moves from present to past and back again with no evident clues by which the reader can come to know this. It appears that time is not important for Pynchon, or, perhaps, that its order is not important, or not revealing, for what really happens, what he really seeks to show with his novels.

McHale identifies Pynchon as using this triangulation concept, but on a much larger scale than that of the momentary shift. Often a whole aside will be used as transition between two points of view. Pynchon also uses a technique that McHale calls "mapping." This can be seen as the reader begins to notice how certain characters can stand in or "map onto" others. Bianca and Ilse, the two daughters conceived, respectively, through the making and viewing of the movie, Alpdrucken, are an exemplary pair. When the idea of one is invoked, the other will certainly follow or be implied in the scene somehow. The reader does not have a distinctive idea of how the two are different, other than by basic logistic differences. This is one of Pynchon's ways of interconnecting his huge cast of characters into a somewhat cohesive unit.

Mapping is but another example of how Pynchon has taken a trope of modernism and reworked it for his own devices. What are these devices and where did they come from? These questions are those which have plagued his critics forever. These are the sorts of questions he wants the reader to seek to answer while reading his texts. That he has successfully made his reader confused is the mark that he has succeeded at his goals.

McHale also defines modernist texts as being those that must be processed, ones that call upon the reader to make and seek patterns within the text. In Pynchon's text, however, this search for patterns is heightened and, ultimately leads one into a state of paranoia. McHale quotes Mark Siegel:

Pynchon uses this tactic to his advantage. Pynchon's mode of mapping is often an extreme version. Rather than being a method Pynchon uses to express his point, this is the way by which Pynchon writes. To separate any paranoia or connectivity from the plot itself would be impossible, for it is the plot itself or lack thereof.

In his chapter as a whole, Brian McHale shows that Gravityís Rainbow parodies or plays off of the definition of the modern text. By doing this, Pynchon challenges the veracity of the truths the modernists find to be so intrinsic. He places himself into the postmodern with great dramatic deliberateness. These so-called truths of modernism can no longer hold true. They are rejected and overturned in favor of new theories. Identifying these new methods within Pynchon's work is a task all its own and one at which he does not want his reader to succeed. This very quality helps to define Pynchon as postmodern and define the postmodernity that Pynchon creates for himself.

Throughout McHale's theoretical analysis of Pynchon, one can see an undercurrent of a number of other postmodern or poststructural theorists such as Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes.Hanjo Berressem identifies the necessity of seeing Pynchon through these sorts of postmodern theorists, Derrida in particular. At the same time, though, he also sees this as potentially problematic. "The creation of a 'poststructuralist Pynchon' is long overdue...Primarily Derridean critics have hailed him as a leading deconstructor, yet the ease with which he is read within a Derridean framework is deceptive." Berressem goes on to define this deception as being grounded in the nature of both Derridean deconstruction and Pynchon's texts to be centered or stabilized upon the idea of instability itself. This concept of Pynchon's texts as actually being about instability makes them acceptably incoherent, as he is consciously devaluing order or order's necessary presence. To do so through his own textual organization places this even more at the forefront of his theoretical aims. To read Pynchon in a Derridean framework is problematic since he has already subscribed himself to the reading Derrida seeks for the critic to find in texts that do not conform.

One of Derrida's most influential texts is his "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourses of the Human Sciences." These three concepts are important to the theories of Derrida in general, as he uses these words in a different manner than many before him. They are also essential to know if reading any critical text since his theories' publications, for their meaning and connotation have become a part of contemporary critical language and better define what an author may be meaning.

In following the work of the structuralists or formalists who based much of their literary analysis on how a work is physically put together, Derridaís emphasis on structure seems logical. He draws from Saussure's idea that all linguistic systems are differential and takes this further to show that, thus systems cannot be structured. Through a lack of ability to totalize, to have finite language, it is seen that infinite options lead to a concept of play. Here it is not a bad thing to have what I will call infinicy--the ability to be infinite--play is good, even necessary to literature's effectiveness.

Derrida finds himself in a bit of a quandary after all this deconstruction, as do most of these sorts of thinkers, in that he cannot, by his own rules, fully deconstruct himself. If he were to do so, he would be left in nihilism and nonexistence. This dilemma of deconstructionism is perhaps an inevitable one and it seems that no one has solved it to this date.

Charles Russell identifies this play as key to Pynchon as fitting into the postmodern deconstructionist model. "(A) preoccupation with language, especially with the ceaseless dialectic of assertion and collapse of meaning--of creation and deconstruction--generates the self-reflexive linguistic play (...that) has become the primary aesthetic style of our period, the period known as the postmodern." Here the idea of play is conjured up in conjunction with Pynchon. In fact, play is seen as intrinsic to all postmodern texts.

In Pynchon's text, the reader can see this play as the movement from one subject to the next. Pynchon is playful in the way in which he pieces together very different things and creates plausible connections between them. Even the placement of these concepts next to one another, their juxtaposition, is atypical or abnormal. Substitution of one character for another, as in the case of Ilse and Bianca is also a sort of play. The multiplicity of interpretations one can take away from the text is a sign that there is play at work here.

Pynchon plays with his reader as a cat with a mouse. He lets the reader think they are getting away with something and then lays down his proverbial paw with a conflicting piece of information. The reader has the chance to play here too. What the reader puts in to the text is a place where the Derridean critic can find playful elements as well. This may be hesitant play, or it may be just as calculated as Pynchonís, this is dependent only upon the reader.

This idea of play leads to the definition of another key Derridean concept<,that of the "decentering" of the text. To Claude Levi-Strauss, to whom Derrida writes in counterpoint, language must have a center or origin. By seeing a system as not being a structure, Derrida sees it as not having an origin. He defines this origin or source as being at the center of the structure. But, since a literary system or linguistic act is not a structure, it is devoid of an origin and center. He writes that "(the) movement of play, permitted by the lack or absence of a center or origin, is the movement of supplementarity." Play occurs in response to a text without center or origin. Play seeks to reconcile this rift, perhaps, or provide momentary centering within the play-action. It is a human quality to seek origins. When none is readily available one must create an origin or center through the supplementarity of play.

Molly Hite suggests that, in Pynchon, this decentering is to be reconciled in the way that Pynchon represents middles. Though one cannot tell whether an event in Gravity's Rainbow is absolutely real or unreal, whether Slothrop or oneself has stumbled upon a real or unreal connection, or whether an assumption is paranoid or rational, the point is not to be able to determine this. Pynchon's text exists in the middle. Its very indeterminacy is its definitive quality.

A second reading of the way this works is through the way the readerís own contextuality comes into play. The text itself does not exist on the page, but in the space between what it says and what the reader infuses it with. This existence is momentary and infinitely repeatable, for each reader and each reading will generate a new existence for the novel.

In addition to Derrida, there have been a number of other influential theorists in this school of poststructuralism. Roland Barthes is one such thinker. While Derrida deals more with the role of the text and its more technical aspects, Barthes combats other ways society has traditionally seen literature and that which surrounds it, for example, the relation of the human, be it author or reader, to the text. One such influential idea is that of "the death of the author."

The connection of Pynchon's work to Barthes' concept of the "dead author" is noted by Tony Tanner in introduction to his book on Pynchon, Thomas Pynchon, but is not fully explored. He seems to use this concept as a guiding principle and not an actual analytical tool. He uses a quote from Barthes' text as a place to compare Pynchon, but does not use Barthes' overall theory of literature as contained in this idea of the death of the author as one by which to examine Pynchon. This is an important distinction and is noted by Alec McHoul and David Wills in their book, Writing Pynchon , which, along with Hanjo Berressem's Pynchon's Poetics, deals with the relation of Barthes' theories to Pynchon's work most closely.

Roland Barthes' chapter on "The death of the author" is located in his Image-Music-Text. This theory delineates that once the author has written, or rather scripted, the text he becomes immediately removed from it, dead. Thus negates the tendency to locate textual meaning within the author, for he no longer has any attachment to it. This opinion divorces Barthes from more humanistic schools of criticism, which find meaning to be located in the genius of the author himself.

This has great implications on postmodern theory of the Reader Response Theory school as well. If meaning is no longer to be found in the author then it can only be located in the reader, for Pynchon, in each individual reader at the time that he reads the text. Thus, an author can even return to her own text as a reader.

Barthes' idea that the author dies immediately upon the act of scripting echoes Friedrich Nietzsche's famous aphorism of "God is dead." In Pynchon's writing, a connection is enforced between these two concepts and a certain sort of human quest for order. In the worlds Pynchon creates there is certainly no God. There is also potentially no author. Verity of what is on the page is challengeable and uncertain. The reader is left with feelings of doubt in both her narrator and the author himself. This constant sort of doubt leads the reader to feel a paranoia not unlike that of the novel's protagonist. This uncertainty is intrinsic to how Pynchon's texts operate on a large-scale level. Though a reader is left with a feeling of doubt in Pynchon's genuineness, this is typical of Pynchon and the feeling is recognizable as being one created by his text. There is a duality existing here between missing a directive authorial presence and feeling a manipulative authorial presence that is hiding something from his readers.

McHale would define this doubt of Pynchon's authorial intentions and honesty as being an ontological truth. It works on a level above that of knowledge, a level of determining an actual reality above that of the textís own reality.

Pynchon seems to deliberately work with this Barthesian concept of the dead author. He veritably makes himself invisible and inaccessible. His biographical reclusiveness makes it impossible to simply ask him as to his intentions. His refusal to acknowledge his own light of writerly genius in and of itself precludes him from falling into a traditional humanistic realm of literary theory.

The nature of his text also distances him from it. No longer can the author be said to be somehow behind the scenes of the text, animating it and infusing it with meaning. Instead, a reader cannot find him anywhere in the text, and, if one tries, falls short, into paranoia as to who he is, and where he lies. This problematic text disassociates Pynchon, the author, from his text even more. This deliberateness is most certainly a self-aware act. Thus, one could refer to Pynchon's authorial death as a suicide. The "suicidal author" as seen here is a quality unique to Pynchon and few others, but surely a provocative one for the reader and critic.

Here Pynchon's reader and critic is left in a peculiar predicament. What can the reader do when left with no sure concept of what is happening in a text or its meaning? The tools that have been developed in the experienced reader will not help him here. Even those developed for dealing with the problems of modernist novels fall short when reading Gravity's Rainbow or another Pynchon novel. Pynchon forces the reader to develop a new set of tools, tools which go against the normal tools relied upon by the modern reader, none of which can be used universally throughout the novel or in any of his novels. They are touch and go--developed on the proverbial road of reading this strange and convoluted novel. The very immediacy of these tools, their rudimentary nature, is what Pynchon relies on for the effect of his writing.

It is necessary to develop a strategy for reading this book. However, just as this seems to be working it will be thrown back in one's face. And here, too, is another of Pynchon's crafty writing secrets. The constant development and rejection of reading tools is part of Pynchon's plan for his readers. Thus, the suicidal author returns from his grave to manipulate the reader once again. By his very deliberate death he rebirths himself, in this act creating a new space in which the author can operate in perpetuity. This idea will recur in looking at Pynchon in relation to Reader Response Theory, for, as the reader shall see, this space lies in the eternally new reader.

Pynchon's relation to Barthesian theory does not end with this single concept of the 'death of the author.' Barthes also writes, in both S/Z and The Pleasure of the Text, of a concept of fetishization of the text. This relation extends and develops between the two texts, and an understanding of his conception of this fetishization is only gained upon reading both mentions. Thus, in S/Z he writes, "this sundered, dissected body...is reassembled by the artist...into a whole body...in which fetishism is abolished." Here the artist has power, has some sort of control over his medium, by which he can take his own object of fetish and, through his art, eradicate it of all fetishability. This changes, then, in The Pleasure of the Text, where he writes, "(t)he text is a fetish object, and this fetish desires me." Now fetish is intrinsic to the text, to the work of art. The author's attempts to eliminate fetish within it have failed. Or have they? Perhaps the artist has rebranded this fetish, commodifying it to attract the reader rather than leaving it as a sort of masturbatory, personal authorial fetish object.

Hanjo Berressem identifies Pynchon's text as working within this dynamic; "aware that the text is always already this supplement, Pynchon constantly carries it to its own limit, to the limits of reading as well as writing." Pynchon, with a sense of deliberation, works with this notion of the finished text as a fetish object. Thus, he is the one who commodifies it to the consumer, the reader. Though this puppeteering seems to devalue the reader, to make her merely a pawn for Pynchon to play with, this relation is essential to text, both specifically the Pynchonean and generally the postmodernist.

This idea also connects to the school of Reader Response Criticism. Though theories within this school are varied, one common trope rings true throughout--that the reader is seen as an, if not the, important component of the formation of the text as a meaningful object. The reader is elevated here. He is seen as a contributor to the meaning of the text that he determines. He brings his own knowledge and uses it as a tool by which to interpret the text. This is all any reader can do and each individual reading adds to the compendium of meaning the text holds or allows. There are infinite possible readings, meanings and truths to be found within any text. That which the author intended is but one and, if she returns to her text, she can have a different reading entirely than that she had originally intended.

How do all of these components create a unique version of postmodernism in Pynchon's own texts? Pynchon seems to have crafted his own version of, or his own reaction to, postmodernism. He certainly writes with a more notably intentional theoretical bent than most authors do. Is this a sign of what a postmodern novel ought to be? Ought it say something about literature, about writing, about reading? Or does this text, but doing this, by being a practicum of a theory, overstep the boundaries between theory and text?

The answers to these questions lie in the importance of reading Pynchon. This importance takes two guises, one for the academic reader and the second for any contemporary reader. If readers take Pynchon's text as doing this, as prescribing a sort of reading for itself and other texts, then this text is valuable to both the academic and the layman reader. As Molly Hite denotes, many avid Pynchon fans are not academic readers at all, but the common man.

For the academic reader, Gravityís Rainbow shows a particular sort of brand of postmodernism. It shows how one is to read such a text and what oneís interpretive options could be. This theoretical take on how to read a postmodern text is of the utmost concern to the modern academic no matter his field of interest. It is necessary to understand the context under which one lives as much as is possible, and to be aware of one's own role as a reader in the modern age. These principles can be applied to any text, for if the reader sees importance in his own reading then that is the source of all livelihood of the text.

For the contemporary reader who is less interested in the functions of a text Gravity's Rainbow is a puzzling joyride. Unlike books that do the work for the readers, by providing completeness of detail and easy-to-relate-to linear plot lines, yes, Gravity's Rainbow takes work. However this work will be rewarding for the plethora of readings allowable by the text surely includes one that will suit any reader. In that this reader will craft and contribute to this individualized reading, this is inevitable, but Pynchon takes it even a step further. His inclusion of so many different types of allusion, his creatively crafted characters and his web-like plot-lines all allow for the reader to find a niche. Though the characters may seem comical or flat, they have a certain amount of realism behind them to which the contemporary reader can relate.

And, above all, because Pynchon writes about postmodernism and the nature of writing in such a setting, this information in and of itself can be taken away from the text and applied in the real world, to postmodern life, as it were. Gravity's Rainbow surely is not the only text that does this, but, because the boundaries of postmodernism are definitively multiple, this is surely one take on postmodernism and ways of reading or sign-interpreting within it.

Looking at Pynchon through a lens of theoretical postmodernism is crucial to any reader's understanding of his importance as a postmodern writer. The connections inherent in his text to major ideas of postmodernism and the unique reader response theory he employs are essential to a critical reading of his texts. These perspectives provided on reading in general by his theories of text are of importance to both the academic reader, who must always seek for these sorts of answers and the more general modern reader who is also, in many ways, a student of the machine of postmodernism.