（英语语言文学专业论文）论品钦《V》中的时间与空间.pdf

iii 论品钦论品钦v 中的时间与空间中的时间与空间 研究生：刘进秀 年级：2005 级 学科专业：英语语言文学 指导老师：刘玉红教授 研究方向：英美文学 中中 文文 摘摘 要要 托马斯品钦（1937- ）是当代美国一位颇具影响力的作家。他的小说引起评论界 的广泛关注。他的第一部长篇小说v.一经问世便获得了当年的福克纳基金奖的最佳新 作奖。品钦的小说难懂，小说中的时间与空间也常常是变幻不定的。品钦着重写的时间多 集中在过去和现在。 他描写的过去多以重大的灾难性的历史事件发生的时间为背景， 人们 试图追寻自己的过去而“进入”到历史中去，但是人们的这种追寻是没有结果的。品钦强 调小说的空间形式， 在看似支离破碎的混乱中包含一个共同的主题。 读者必须把分散中文 中各处的情节联系起来才能获得对作品的统一的印象。 在 v 的时间处理上， 品钦强调发生 在过去的重大的灾难性历史事件对人们现在生活的影响。v 的身份是一个谜，小说中它的 每一次出现都伴随着重大的灾难性历史事件。 斯坦希尔对 v 的追寻，是他保持生机勃 勃的源泉和继续生活的意义所在。 对 v 的追寻同时也是对自我身份和人类充满灾难的历史 的追寻和解读。 普鲁费恩的过去模糊不清， 他在自己的国土上却如同在异国他乡一样陌生。 在空间的处理上，现代小说中的空间形式如情节并置、主题重复、多重故事和反讽等在 v 中均有所表现。 品钦通过两条主要的线索-斯坦希尔的追寻和普鲁费恩流浪、 人性化和 非人化的社会、 地上生活颓废的全病帮和地下向老鼠传道的疯子牧师等情节的并置向人们 展示了二战后特别是五十年代中期美国社会的死气沉沉和缺乏生机。 这种生活状态是人类 社会渐趋熵化的结果。 熵是小说暗含的主题， 小说中到处都体现着熵值的增加和人类精神 的死亡。 小说中的多重故事和反讽手法也为了体现熵的主题。 品钦通过这部小说表达了他 对人类社会渐趋熵化的担忧和对人类命运的关注。 关键词关键词：品钦；v；时间；空间 品钦；v；时间；空间 iv on time and space in pynchons v. postgraduate: liu jin-xiu grade:2005 major field of study: english linguistics and literature supervisor: professor. liu yu-hong orientation: english and american literature abstract in english thomas pynchon (1937- ) is an influential novelist in the contemporary american literature. his fiction attracts much attention from critics. his first novel v. won the william faulkner foundation award for the best first novel of the year when it was published. pynchons fiction is difficult to understand. the time and space are always changeable. the time pynchon stressed is in the past and at present. the past is often with background of historical events of disaster. people “enter into” the past when they try to search their own past, but this kind of search is in vain. pynchon emphasizes the spatial form in his fiction. there is a theme behind the broken-up confusion. readers have to connect the plots scattered all over the novel so that they can have a unitary impression of it. when dealing with time in v., pynchon emphasizes the effect of the historical disasters on the lives at present. vs identity is a mystery; it connects with historical disaster every time it appears. stencils search of v is a way to keep his energetic and meaningful life. the quest for v is also a quest and explanation for self-identity and mankinds disastrous history. since profane has no apparent past, he lives his life aimlessly and feels alien in his own country. when depicting the space, there are spatial forms like parallel of plots, repetition of the theme, multi-leveled stories and satire as that in the modern fiction. by paralleling the plots as the two major lines: stencils search and profanes yo-yoing, the animate and the inanimate society, the decadent life of the whole sick crew above the ground and the insane priest father fairings preaching to rats underground , pynchon reveals the stagnant and inanimateness in the postwar america especially in the mid-50s. this kind of life is a result that mankinds entropic tendency. entropy is an implied theme of the novel. there are increase of entropy value and the death of mans spirit. the multi-leveled stories and the satire are also embodying entropy. pynchon shows his worry about mankinds entropic tendency and his concern on the living conditions of man. key words: pynchon; v.; time; space ii acknowledgements my thanks are first given to my supervisor prof. liu yu-hong, who is always available with steady reassurance and challenging questions that let me see clearly the main drift of my thought. prof. liu takes precious time from a heavy schedule of teaching to read my paper and constantly gives me comments and guidance throughout the process. without her generous help and encouragement, my thesis wont have appeared in the present form. much is owed to the teachers who have taught me over the past three years, especially prof. he rui-rong, prof. zhang shu-ning, prof. bai jing-ze, prof. yuang bing-ye, prof. lu xiao-hong and prof. chen ji-tang. i have learned a lot from their marvelous lectures. i would like to offer my personal thanks to my family who has always encouraged me in my education. i would like to thank the librarians of the foreign language institute and the university for the opportunity to collect materials i need. lastly, i am grateful to all my friends who have helped and encouraged me. 1 chapter 1 introduction 1.1 thomas pynchon and his achievements thomas pynchon (1937- ), one of the most important and popular novelists in america since the 1960s, has got such a reputation because “in his inclusiveness he is a kind of cultural encyclopedia”. he is “the american writer with the deepest kind of skepticism about the advantages of being included by the culture america has inherited and shaped” (poirier 1975:152). pynchon always lives as a recluse. the record of his childhood and his cornell university life mostly disappeared. until now, what is known is that pynchon has got distinguished ancestors in american history. pynchon was born on may 8, 1937, eight years before the v-e day, in glen cove, new york. the day in 1945 becomes important in pynchons fiction. he graduated at 16 as the class salutatorian and recipient of the julia l. thurston award given to the student with “the highest average in the study of english” (winston 1975:282) from oyster bay high school in 1953. he entered cornell university on a scholarship and began studying engineering physics. two years later he left the university and joined the navy, possibly serving in the signal corps. his four years there provided him with sources for his fiction. after that he returned to cornell to study literature, although he maintained his interest in science. there he published his first story the small rain (in the cornell writer, in march 1959), which was included in his short-story collection slow learner (1984). pynchons first novel v., was an immediate success. his other works include the crying of lot 49 (1966), gravitys rainbow (1973), vineland (1990), mason and dixon (1997), and against the day (2006). pynchon is arguably the most important of the postmodern novelists, the norton anthology of american literature stays that “thomas pynchon has managed to remain the most private of contemporary american writers” (baym, 1989:2222), his recluse, however, doesnt weaken his greatness. pynchon has become more and more important. according to newman, pynchon is “a self-effacing prophet of doom, he is the recording conscience of our demise as a culture and the voice of salvational alternatives” (1986:11). and mendelson has called pynchon “the greatest living writer in the english-speaking world” (1978:15) pynchon is always on the best-seller lists with most of his works, among them, gravitys rainbow, as long as more than eight hundred pages, was considered as his masterpiece and one of the best postmodern novels. it won the national book award. it is not only popular, but also ranking with ulysses and moby-dick in accomplishment and probably at the same level in complexity. against the day, pynchons latest novel, also appeared as a success and invoked great curiosity from critics. pynchon has four groups of readers, the first group is the educated young people who were 2 trained to read the “hard books” in the sixties; the second is the academics who experience the same sequence and development; the third is a growing number of quite learned academic readers who enjoy puzzles in pynchons works; and the last is the people from these groups and also in books business. although most of pynchons audience feels the difficulty in reading pynchon, they are enthusiastic about pynchons books. there are several websites dedicated to and providind material about pynchon. furthermore, some magazines, using pynchons name as title, centering on pynchon, his works or critical essays, for instance, mindful pleasures: essays on thomas pynchon is quite influential among pynchon criticism. 1.2 the main idea of v. v. was published when pynchon was only 26. it has two narrating lines. the first line is about herbert stencil, a son of an english spy. in the novel stencils purpose is to search a woman v who maybe stencils mother, his fathers love, venus, the virgin, victoria, war, catholicism or anything else. there are historical events discovered when his quest goes on. stencils search for v is also a search for his own history and the human history. the pursuance makes his life meaningful. by doing this he has got an energetic feeling and he doesnt want to give it up. yet stencil chooses materials on his own preference which is subjective or unreliable to constructs the “real” facts. therefore he cant find the exact person or meaning when the novel ends. thus v. leaves an open ending. the second line is about a schlemihl and human yo-yo, benny profane. profane wanders aimlessly along the east coast and constantly shifts his jobs. he first does road laboring after his being charged from the navy, then he haunts from the east to the bum of new york city. he meets people by chance, from the sailors in the tavern to the whole sick crew, a group of decadent artists. but he keeps distance from them. the profane line and the stencil line are mingling together nearly at the end of the novel. the combination of these temporal and spatial lines shows the absurdity and meaninglessness of the postwar american social life. 1.3 the critical response to v. v. was instantly acclaimed and it won the william faulkner foundation award for the best first novel of the year(1963). it is a book of mighty maze with vastness and intricacy, “the book reads like a literary hoax, a parody of the quest romance and tale of international intrigue” (hassan, 1963:44). although v. is not as famous as the latter, gravitys rainbow, it helped pynchon formed his writing style, that is, intricate, ambiguous, “elliptic and cockeyed, studded with zany name and improbable locutions” (ibid) and many ways for interpretation. the exuberant themes in the novel arouse much critical attention. on the metaphoric issue 3 of entropy in v., robert d. newman regarded the central mystery as that “the answer is that there is no answer”. but he complained that the apocalyptic tag that most critics had attached to v. is too one-dimensional (i.e. the entropic viewpoint) to fit pynchons fiction, “in v., the investigation of the various historical incarnation of thanatos invites theories of a conspiracy of darkness while demonstrating how such paranoia, while apparently justified, abets entropic decay”(1986:56). david seed agrees that entropy is a strict theme, “the text is complicated so as to make a clear overview well nigh impossible and goes further still on the question of v itself” (1986:116). more recently theodore d. kharpertian has attempted to merge the idea of entropy with its opposite (1990:442). besides entropy, critics also discussed other thematic issues v. displays. for instance, allison russell states that v. “exhibits a postmodernist stance toward the subject of travel, a stance that may be described accurately as post-tourist” (2000:52). the meaning of v attracts much attention from the critics. mary allen examined the “blankness” of women in v., and aptly concluded that “the variety of women in v. results from the various fantasies of men” (1976:43). alice jardine shows that “v herself is nothing more than a fetish-constructionthat man will always search for, without ever knowing why” (1985:250). mark d. hawthorne says v. needs to be (re)read from the vantage of its pervasive sexuality on treatment of gender roles and gender identification (1997:74). there are also critical responses on the plot of v. richard patteson argues that “the importance of the structure of v. becomes even clearer when structure is seen as an expansion of one of the novels major themes - the form, function and ultimate limitations of knowledge” (1974:30). melvyn new analyzes that the seeming failure of the modern imagination to contrive a whole form scatters the world into pieces that do not seem to fit (1986:93). s. bercovitch thinks that v. is “veritable study of parallelism” (1999:469). the style of v. is also discussed by critics. scott sanders claims that v. “exhibits the habit of language and the view of history whichhas named the paranoid style” (1975:178). peter balbert finds that pynchon uses “a panoply of metaphor” to indicate his “exuberance of style” (2002:1). shawn smith concludes that “the hallmark of pynchons style, including his alinear, open-ended narratives, his anti-realism, the dense blanket of allusions that inform his prose, and the plots which arent quite explained by the events we read emerge full-blown in this first novel” (2004: 27). pynchons works are complicated and labyrinthine, which make them a little bit difficult for the chinese people, it is a challenge to read thomas pynchon. critical essays about pynchons v. are not as many as that in the western countries. now there are over thirty articles on pynchons fiction, including four on v. yan qi-gang and sun wan-jun discuss the quest for the 4 narrative traces for the postmodernist v. he wei analyzes the transformation of imagery and loss of privileged discourse. ye hua-nian talks about the kaleidoscope-like life and the heat death oriented history on thomas pynchons concern about mans fate. dai cong-rong says about the complicated world v. displays. to conclude, criticism on v. are fruitful but centering more on theme, the characterization, the plot and the style than on technique. the technique is an efficient way to carry out the authors purpose and to express his attitude toward society. there are two reasons for me to focus on technique in the thesis. for one thing, few critics made fully study on it. for the other, time and space are abundant in the work. to be specific, this thesis will be devoted to ways of using time and space and the combination of these two elements to show pynchons ideas in the novel. the thesis is made up of five chapters. the first chapter is a general introduction about pynchon, his achievements and his fiction. the major discussion is on the main idea of v. and the critical responses on this novel. the second chapter is a major analysis about how the time and space are used in pynchons fiction and how they are working for theme. the third chapter is to analyze the past and the present in the work to reveal the historical past, the subjectivity to reconstruct the past, the influence of the past to the present and the condition at present in v. the fourth chapter is about space in the novel. pynchon tries to depict the vast living picture of the postwar america through the parallel of plots, repetition of entropy, multi-level stories and satire. pynchon shows his cares about humanity and his worry about the “heat death” tendency of mankind. the fifth chapter is a conclusion of the thesis. 5 chapter 2 time and space in pynchons fiction the question of relationship between time and space is raised long ago. as early as the eighteenth century, lessing compared two kinds of arts, poetry and painting, in his laocoon. he claimed that poetry was an art of time, while painting an art of space. this comparison had its own advantage and did help people master different features of poetry and painting. but this advantage was challenged by the later artistic practice. in the twentieth century, the modern realistic literature displayed an anti-traditional tendency. comparing to the traditional fiction, the twentieth century fiction looks for reading effect by combining time and space and by breaking the traditional, linear temporal order. the traditional wall of time and space was broken here. the twentieth century novelists tried to depict their work as a whole, the unity not lay in the temporal but in the spatial relationships. they preferred space and structure to the chronological single narration order. they cut the chronological order with insertions of chapters and multi-leveled stories, etc. readers have to receive and understand the work as a whole by putting together the fragments scattered all over the novel. for instance, in his ulysses, james joyce showed the readers a picture of dublin as an event - he reconstructed the typical scenes and voice, people and place of dublin in one day. back and forth joyce cut different acts which happened at the same time in different places so as to form an integrate impression and unitary feeling. 2.1 historical time as background time time is an important concern of pynchon. the time in his fiction mainly deals with the past and the present. the future is not so emphasized for pynchon. the past pynchon cares about is usually about the great events in history, in other words, pynchon discusses the past as historical past. the history of human being, especially the calamities that happened in history, is displayed in different ways. pynchons v., the crying of lot 49, gravitys rainbow, vineland, mason and dixon, and other works, all steeped in history in different ways and avoided repeating the calamities in the future. critics argued the quest for historical knowledge in pynchons texts and his metafictional perspective on such quests. they think the quest is a symbol for the misguided search for the transcendental signifier, the metaphysical idea, the absolute truth, in short, symbols of precisely the sort of meaning pynchon suggests is hidden within, but not lost to the process of history. john stark thinks that pynchon does not often refer to social and political history, but when he does he usually subordinates them to other issues (1980:105). thomas schaub claims that pynchon