ABSTRACT
Hayden White’s argument ‘that the conviction that one can make sense of history stands on the same level of epistemic plausibility as the conviction that it makes no sense whatsoever’ 1 seems to echo a recurring concern in Thomas Pynchon’s work. Stencil in V., Oedipa Maas in The Crying of Lot 49, and Slothrop in Gravity’s Rainbow all seek to discern some order or pattern in the world and its history. An inevitable problem then arises to haunt them throughout the novels-is this pattern, order, meaning (if located) a property of the world and of history? Or is it a projection of the ordering perception of the one who is searching for meaning? If the order or meaning perceived is primarily a property of the interpreter’s perception, how, then, is that sublime object of interpretation-historical reality-to be approached? And what are the political implications of this problem? A number of critics have discussed the epistemological problems presented in Pynchon’s work, but surprisingly little attention has been paid to the precise setting or context in which Pynchon locates those problems. Yet these are essential components of the work.
