ABSTRACT
When Gerhard Hoffmann discusses Robert Coover's 1977 The Public Burning, these shifting histories are his major concern with the writer's representation. Like Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow—drawing much of its substance from the events of Second World War—Coover's fourth book placed itself as part of a skewed reality. At several places in the novel, Pynchon attests to the futility of the binary. In 1971 Don DeLillo had published Americana; in 1972, End Zone; and in 1973, Great Jones Street. In the case of DeLillo, it took him another half-dozen novels, starting with Ratner's Star in 1976 and ending with White Noise, to reach the apex of public and private readership that had marked the acknowledged success of Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Brian McHale states that David Foster Wallace's novels resemble Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, particularly in their inclusion of information.
