Metahistoricizing Pynchon: A Case for Dr. Smith(?‪)‬

Pynchon and History: Metahistorical Rhetoric and Postmodern Narrative Form in the Novels of Thomas Pynchon, by Shawn Smith. New York: Routledge, 2005. 248 pp. $75. Shawn Smith's purpose in Pynchon and History is to show "that Pynchon's approach to fiction, his postmodern narrative techniques and his complex use of language, reveals a direct relationship between the form and content of his narratives and his perspective on the historical facts and contexts they contain" (1). All in all, Smith is fairly successful. This judgment may seem surprising, because, given the various problems with the study, one could also come to quite a different conclusion. The first of these problems is, albeit not exclusively, structural. In his introduction, "Pynchon and History: An Overview" (1-17), Smith talks a bit about Pynchon and a bit about history, but he does not give an adequate overview of what other Pynchon scholars have written about the subject. Instead of providing such a detailed survey, which could have served to contextualize and justify his subsequent endeavors, he discusses Lukacs, Marx, Jameson, V. and Gravity's Rainbow, appends some sketchy notes (183-84) and hastens to draw all sorts of conclusions better presented in the relevant chapters or at the monograph's end but certainly not at its beginning. (1)