SOURCE: "Attenuated Postmodernism: Pynchon's Vineland," in Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Vol. XXXII, No. 2, Winter, 1990, pp. 67-76.

In the following essay, Cowart examines Pynchon's mytho-historical perspective in Vineland, drawing comparison between the literary aesthetics of Pynchon and James Joyce.

Thomas Pynchon, creator of the most significant body of fiction in contemporary America, may have spent some of the last 17 years discovering the limits of the postmodernist aesthetic. Vineland, his long-awaited fourth novel, appears 17 years after the publication in 1973 of the monumental Gravity's Rainbow, widely recognized now as the most important American novel published since World War II. One naturally asks whether this author's art has developed or stagnated over those 17 years. The bad news: Pynchon has made no effort to surpass Gravity's Rainbow. The good news: he has not stood still as a maker of fiction. In Vineland, which may represent a turning point for Pynchon, the author...