outline_us_lit

eing reported. In The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test(1968), Tom Wolfe (1931- ) celebrated the counterculturewanderlust of novelist Ken Kesey(1935-2001); Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing theFlak Catchers (1970) ridiculed many aspects ofleft-wing activism. Wolfe later wrote an exuberantand insightful history of the initial phase ofthe U.S. space program, The Right Stuff (1979),and a novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987), apanoramic portrayal of American society in the1980s.As the 1960s evolved, literature flowed with theturbulence of the era. An ironic, comic vision alsocame into view, reflected in the fabulism of severalwriters. Examples include Ken Kesey’s darklycomic One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962),a novel about life in a mental hospital in whichthe wardens are more disturbed than theinmates, and the whimsical, fantastic TroutFishing in America (1967) by Richard Brautigan(1935-1984).The comical and fantastic yielded a new mode,half comic and half metaphysical, in ThomasPynchon’s paranoid, brilliant V and The Crying ofLot 49, John Barth’s Giles Goat-Boy, and thegrotesque short stories of Donald Barthelme(1931-1989), whose first collection, Come Back,Dr. Caligari, was published in 1964.This new mode came to be called metafiction— self-conscious or reflexive fiction that callsattention to its own technique. Such “fictionabout fiction” emphasizes language and style,and departs from the conventions of realismsuch as rounded characters, a believable plotenabling a character’s development, and appropriatesettings. In metafiction, the writer’s styleattracts the reader’s attention. The true subjectis not the characters, but rather the writer’s ownconsciousness.Critics of the time commonly groupedPynchon, Barth, and Barthelme as metafictionists,along with William Gaddis (1922-1998),whose long novel JR (l975), about a young boywho builds up a phony business empire fromjunk bonds, eerily forecasts Wall Street excessesto come. His shorter, more accessibleCarpenter’s Gothic (1985) combines romancewith menace. Gaddis is often linked with midwesternphilosopher/novelist William Gass(1924- ), best known for his early, thoughtfulnovel Omensetter’s Luck (1966), and for storiescollected in In the Heart of the Heart of theCountry (1968).Robert Coover (1932- ) is another metafictionwriter. His collection of stories Pricksongs &Descants (1969) plays with plots familiar fromfolktales and popular culture, while his novel ThePublic Burning (1977) deconstructs the executionof Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who wereconvicted of espionage.Thomas Pynchon (1937- )Thomas Pynchon, a mysterious, publicity-shunningauthor, was born in New York and graduatedfrom Cornell University in 1958, where he mayhave come under the influence of VladimirNabokov. Certainly, his innovative fantasies usethemes of translating clues, games, and codesthat could derive from Nabokov. Pynchon’s flexibletone can modulate paranoia into poetry.All of Pynchon’s fiction is similarly structured. Avast plot is unknown to at least one of themain characters, whose task it thenbecomes to render order out of chaos and decipherthe world. This project, exactly the job ofthe traditional artist, devolves also upon thereader, who must follow along and watch forclues and meanings. This paranoid vision isextended across continents and time itself, forPynchon employs the metaphor of entropy, thegradual running down of the universe. The masterfuluse of popular culture — particularly sciencefiction and detective fiction — is evident inhis works.Pynchon’s work V (1963) is loosely structuredaround Benny Profane — a failure who engages in108