Professor Hungerford introduces this lecture by reviewing the way in which the authors of the program have thus far dealt with the relationship between language and life, that set of elusive or obvious things which, for literary critics, fall within the realm of category of “Real”. "The Real can scream from a work of art, as it sometimes does in Black Boy, or haunt it, as in Lolita. It can elude authors like Kerouac and Barth for very different reasons. Firmly placing Pynchon in the context of the political upheavals of the 1960s that he often seemed to avoid, Hungerford argues that Pynchon—no less than a writer of faith like Flannery O'Connor—is deeply invested in questions of meaning and emotion. response, so that The Crying of Lot 49 is a heartfelt call for connection and a lament for loss, as much as it is a wry, playful puzzle.
00h00 – Chapter 1. Language and reality: course review
09:18 – Chapter 2. Pynchon and politics: activism and passivism in the 1960s
3:42 p.m. – Chapter 3. The variable roles of Oedipa Maas
36:02 – Chapter 4. Finding reality in social details
Complete course materials are available on the Open Yale Courses website: http://open.yale.edu/courses
This course was recorded in spring 2008.
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