Abstract

Promising to explore "how the experience of political and historical events has shaped the novelist's perspective," Reminiscence and Re-Creation traces a continuity that connects the decline of the Old Left, the period of reassessment in the 50s exemplified in the work of Norman Mailer, and the pivot into postmodern openness present in the writings of Thomas Pynchon and John Barth. So we have four chapters: one on the special attraction of Marxism to a culture immersed in Puritan millennialism, then single chapters on Mailer, pynchon and Barth. Together, Olster argues, these three writers inscribe an arc from the misbegotten millennialism of American Marxism to the open-ended affirmation of postmodern fiction.

How to Cite:

Schaub, T., (1989) “Continuities, Echoes and Associations”, Pynchon Notes , 135-138. doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/pn.304