Abstract

In these postmodern times, Marjorie Perl off argues, most critics have "tended to dismiss genre as a more or less anachronistic and irrelevant concept" (3). But we cannot do away with the notion of genre: "however 'irrelevant' generic taxonomies may seem in the face of the postmodern interdisciplinarity of the arts … [and] however pointless it may seem to classify and label texts that refuse to fit into the established categories, practically speaking, it is virtually impossible to read a given new 'text' without bringing to it a particular set of generic expectations" (Perloff 4).

How to Cite:

Celmer, P. W., Jr, (1993) “Pynchon's V. and the Rhetoric of the Cold War”, Pynchon Notes , 5-32. doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/pn.212