Thomas Pynchon and American Counterculture (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture, Series Number 170)

Pynchon, in Joanna Freer's analysis of most of his fiction, emerges as an engaged if critical participant in the counterculture, rather than a disengaged, apolitical post-modernist. Freer's study places Pynchon within an anti-capitalist, anti-structural framework, which requires readers to contend with whatever opinions or motivations his characters express, for the lack of closure in his sly, challenging, allusive novels demands ambivalence rather than rigidity.Freer argues that this openness to suggestion distinguishes Pynchon."His refusal to endorse any single viewpoint without qualifications" invites readers into open-ended plots, an anarchic approach and rigorous attention to details which may, or may not, explain many recondite allusions. This complexity reveals central themes of anti-authoritarianism, "escape and escapism, altruistic love, community, political violence, consciousness expansion, and the role of the rational intellect." These dynamics, over five chapters focusing on specific novels as well as short stories and Pynchon's 1966 New York Times essay about the Watts Riots, incorporate left-wing values as they shift from the Beats, New Left protest, psychological and anarchist influences, Black Panther separatist "revolutionary suicide," Marxist dialectics and second-wave feminism. Freer charts how Pynchon evolves in his work, embracing family, growing more humorous and even sentimental as the decades move on and his worldview becomes more mature.Freer shows how Pynchon's writing practice mirrors a quantum model of uncertain possibilities of perception and verification. It urges readers toward self-awareness, anarchist approaches, elliptical plots and narratives which refuse easy explanation or firm resolution.A theme of Pynchon’s that Freer explicates is how the drawbacks of violent resistance to capitalism as imposed by corporations and governments warn radicals against revolt. To Freer, in Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon is showing the danger in idolizing weapons and the temptation of reveling in violent solutions to injustice. Freer uses passages from this dense novel to assert how Pynchon treats violence as a last resort, and how revolutionaries fall prey to media attention as they wander from their initial idealism. This "counterculture cautionary tale" treats racial or ideological separatism as invitations to defeat rather than victory against the powers that be.Another theme of Pynchon’s that Freer explicates is how systematic oppression sparks feminism in the 1960s. The Crying of Lot 49 compares women's liberation with that of the New Left, as the arguably narrower emancipation of females contrasts or competes with the wider social aims of unified struggle. Between the 1966 Crying of Lot 49 and the 1996 Against the Day novels, Freer charts change, albeit gradual, as Pynchon concludes Against the Day by affirming family and home.This study remains accessible, even if geared toward the academic audience which includes Freer and the many critics she cites. At her best, she corrects reductive dismissals of Pynchon's limitations by elucidating his political sophistication, and she strives for fairness when gleaning the positive as well as the negative in his dramatization of feminist and separatist attempts to counter the capitalist and militarist hegemony.More attention to the admittedly less weighty treatment of the counterculture's fate in Inherent Vice (2009), set in pivotal 1970, would have enriched Freer's contents considerably. Because the 18th century is less relevant, the late-eighteenth-century setting of Mason & Dixon (1996) earns less attention. Unfortunately, Bleeding Edge (2013), about 9/11, the Net, and its nest of conspiracies, may have appeared too late for Freer's book, which was printed only twelve months after its publication. Overall, Freer stays focused, and given the difficulty of these source texts, she keeps her reader in mind, explaining contexts and narrative twists.Ultimately, Freer finds Pynchon moving from early satire into fictions riffing on Victor Turner's communitas model. Alternative structures - more grassroots and non-coercive - supplant the norm. These thwart any power held too firmly by any one group. Freer notes how many facets of Pynchon's vision attest to personal improvement and social creativity as keys to effective political action. On smaller and larger levels, the clash of "inspirational and enraging, enigmatic and demanding" messages in Pynchon's fiction confronts readers.