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Article: Postmodern exhaustion: Thomas Pynchon's 'Vineland' and the aesthetic of the beautiful.
- Article from:
- Studies in American Fiction
- Article date:
- March 22, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Northeastern University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Since the publication of his first novel, V, in 1963, Thomas Pynchon's novels have stood as the paradigm of literary, postmodernism. Rife with ontological disturbance, fragmented consciousness, unknowable cabals, disrupted narration, and technological wizardry, Pynchon's work has set the standard for the postmodern novel. In particular, his distinctive metaphysical cosmos and apocalyptic vision both defines and is defined by the category that has emerged in recent years as the pivotal term in various debates on the postmodern: the sublime. Several prominent theorists of postmodernism, most notably Jean-Francois Lyotard and Fredric Jameson, have argued that the sublime is ...