Abstract

Seong-Kon Kim's Journey into the Past: The Historical and Mythical Imagination of Barth and Pynchon, the tenth In Seoul National university's American studies monograph series, grounds itself on an analogy: that like Vice, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Derrida, Barth and Pynchon (whom Kim regards as central to their novelistic generation) have recourse to history and the myths of the past in order to repudiate them in a quest for "new order, new language, or new imagination" (1). According to Kim, postmodernist American fiction and post-structuralist literary theory "ultimately unite and correspond to each other in their perception and interpretation of contemporary reality" (1), one which Kim describes as "the nightmare landscape where the truth is absent" (32).

How to Cite:

Kharpertian, T., (1986) “On Origins and Beginnings”, Pynchon Notes , 118-120. doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/pn.356