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Inherent Vice, Bleeding Edge, and Thomas Pynchon's Hardboiled
- Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 18, Number 1, January 2020
- pp. 125-148
- 10.1353/pan.2020.0006
- Article
- Additional Information
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Abstract:
The critics have noted that Thomas Pynchon's work tends to center around attempts to unravel mysteries, yet, these would-be etective plots have generally been associated with epistemological or ontological quest narratives rather than with crime fiction. However, Pynchon's two most recent novels, Inherent Vice (2009) and Bleeding Edge (2013), engage directly and openly with the conventions of the hardboiled. This paper explores Pynchon's use of the form, examining contributions that it has made to his recent work—a strong narrative framework, access to a set of powerful yet flexible generic tropes, and an anti-authoritarian interest in systematic corporate and governmental corruption. Pynchon's hardboiled, I conclude, is an elegiac yet radical fictional mode highly suitable for his critical analysis of American history.