Copyright

Luc Herman; John M. Krafft;

Published On

2024-12-17

Page Range

pp. 189–198

Language

  • English

Print Length

10 pages

11. Also for Irony

Historical Realism and the Move of a Chapter for the Final Version of V. (1963), by Thomas Pynchon

Chapter of: Genetic Narratology: Analysing Narrative across Versions(pp. 189–198)
In what is perhaps the last letter to his editor about the rewriting of V. in 1962, a slightly exasperated Thomas Pynchon addresses the position of the historical chapter set on Malta: "I put 1919 at the end primarily because there's nowhere else to put it. Also for irony, (…) . If it could go better anywhere else I'd like to know." The chapter could easily have been given its rightful place in the chronology of historical chapters, so “there’s nowhere else to put it” sounds impulsive. Pynchon's declaration of "irony," on the other hand, can be developed as a serious reference to the metafictional effect created by putting "Epilogue, 1919," a relatively straightforward example of historical realism, at the end of a series of chapters in which the historical imagination runs riot. In this chapter, we consider an extraordinary last-minute change to the unobtrusive narratorial stance that characterizes the chapter as a whole.

Contributors

Luc Herman

(author)
Emeritus Professor at University of Antwerp
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6013-2900

Luc Herman is Emeritus Professor of Narrative Theory and American Literature at the University of Antwerp. His publications include Gravity’s Rainbow: Domination & Freedom (2013, with Steven Weisenburger), Handbook of Narrative Analysis (second edition, 2019, with Bart Vervaeck), Becoming Pynchon: Genetic Narratology and V. (2023, with John M. Krafft), and a variety of (often co-authored) essays in journals including Narrative, Poetics Today, Style, Language and Literature, Critique, and Contemporary Literature.

John M. Krafft

(author)
Professor Emeritus at Miami University
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6007-363X

John M. Krafft is Professor Emeritus of English at Miami University. He was a cofounder of the journal Pynchon Notes in 1979, and its coeditor and bibliographer until 2009. A series of essays coauthored with Luc Herman analyzing the evolution of Pynchon’s V. from typescript to published novel culminated in their book Becoming Pynchon: Genetic Narratology and V. (2023).