Original scientific paper
What did we miss in reading Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 ?
Stipe Grgas
; Faculty of humanities and social sciences, University of Zagreb
Abstract
Acknowledging the anniversary edition of the literary journal Književna smotra as the context of his paper, the author specifies that his article was conceived as a reengagement with an earlier published analysis of Pynchon's novel in which he had deployed poststructuralist ideas and procedures in his interpretation. Looking back on his earlier readings of Pynchon's work, the author asks why he and the vast majority of analysts of Pynchon did not see or why they simply ignored the economic thematic which is so evident and conspicuous in The Crying of Lot 49. After amassing evidence which clearly has to do with economic matters, the author proposes that this thematic passed under the screen of their attention because poststructuralist approaches to Pynchon had other priorities. In the second part of the article, the author engages poststructuralist theory and shows that, contrary to the privileging of textualist readings, that theory was always already marked by economic concerns. In the concluding part of the article, the author introduces interdisciplinarity and asks how the rapprochement of literature and economics can function in this new development and what questions need to be asked if such networking of the disciplines is to establish a critically thought-out foundation.
Keywords
conjucture; Pynchon; economics; value; literature; interdisciplinarity
Hrčak ID:
233560
URI
Publication date:
5.2.2020.
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