Citation:
Date Published:
6 Jan, 2020Abstract:
The critics have noted that Thomas Pynchon’s work tends to center around attempts to unravel mysteries, yet, these would-be etective plots have generally been associated with epistemological or ontological quest narratives rather than with crime fiction. However, Pynchon’s two most recent novels, Inherent Vice (2009) and Bleeding Edge (2013), engage directly and openly with the conventions of the hardboiled. This paper explores Pynchon’s use of the form, examining contributions that it has made to his recent work — a strong narrative framework, access to a set of powerful yet flexible generic tropes, and an anti-authoritarian interest in systematic corporate and governmental corruption. Pynchon’s hardboiled, I conclude, is an elegiac yet radical fictional mode highly suitable for his critical analysis of American history.
October 2019: Eric Sandberg completed his PhD at the University of Edinburgh, and is currently an Assistant Professor at City University of Hong Kong and a Docent at the University of Oulu. His research interests range from modernism to the contemporary novel, with a particular interest in the borderlands between literary and popular fiction. His monograph on Virginia Woolf appeared in 2014; he co-edited Adaptation, Awards Culture, and the Value of Prestige for Palgrave in 2017, and edited 100 Greatest Literary Detectives for Rowman & Littlefield in 2018. He has published essays in numerous edited collections, and in journals including Ariel, The Cambridge Quarterly, the Journal of Modern Literature, Critique, and Neohelicon.