Abstract

For Japanese Pynchon critics, the first year of the twenty-first century will be remembered for the publication of two books. One is Yoshihiko Kihara's Thomas Pynchon, the first book-length study of Pynchon published in Japan, written in Japanese. The other is Takayoshi Ishiwari's Postmodern Metamorphosis, in English, with a chapter on The Crying of Lot 49. (That chapter is a slightly revised version of Ishiwari's article "Anti-Oedipa: Masochism, Self-Portrait, and The Crying of Lot 49," which won the 1999 Shinjin-sho, the rookie-of-the-year award in the field of English and American literature offered by the English Literary Society of Japan.) While both books are important by themselves and worth reviewing separately, by reading them together we can see the contours–the where and the what–of Japanese Pynchon studies at the beginning of the new millennium.

How to Cite:

Aso, T., (2001) “Breaking Through Pynchon Studies in Japan”, Pynchon Notes , 251-259. doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/pn.108