Chapter 5 - Pynchon’s Literary Evolution

Summary

By considering the Pynchon’s global novels out of their sequence of publication, the previous chapters have been able to address the full scope of the author’s coherent historical vision, but this reading order also limits discussion of the stylistic and thematic developments that have unfolded during the four decades during which the novels were published. To describe the relation between these different temporalities, the fifth chapter moves athwart the historical chronology established in the three preceding chapters to trace Pynchon’s development as an author across the global novels, and it discusses the consequences of this development for our understanding of the trilogy. More specifically, the chapter analyzes Pynchon’s stylistic evolution from Gravity’s Rainbow, over Mason & Dixon, and to Against the Day, just as it traces how his micropolitical engagements with characterization and themes such as race, gender, and family have changed in conjunction with surrounding cultural and historical developments.