Terrorism and Temporality in the Works of Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo

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Terrorism and Temporality in the Works of Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo starts from a simple premise: that the events of the 11th of September 2001 must have had a major effect on two New York residents, and two of the seminal authors of American letters, Pynchon and DeLillo. By examining implicit and explicit allusion to these events in their work, it becomes apparent that both consider 9/11 a crucial event, and that it has profoundly impacted their work. From this important point, the volume focuses on the major change identifiable in both authors' work; a change in the perception, and conception, of time. This is not, however, a simple change after 2001. It allows, at the same time, a re-examination of both authors work, and the acknowledgment of time as a crucial concept to both authors throughout their careers. Engaging with several theories of time, and their reiteration and examination in both authors' work, this volume contributes both to the understanding of literary time, and to the work of Pynchon and DeLillo.

Reviews

Gourley has made an important contribution to our understanding of the work of two of the most important and most demanding of contemporary American novelists... Tracing some of the influences on these two writers, including Marinetti, Beckett and Proust, and drawing on relevant theoretical arguments, Gourley offers a fresh and illuminating account of their fiction before and after the attack. -- Derek Attridge, University of York, USA
In this remarkable book, James Gourley argues that the 9/11 terrorist attacks threw down a series of challenges: to the perceived position of the United States in the world, to our understanding of time and temporality, and to the notion of art in general and the novel in particular as an adequate and appropriate register of reality. Gourley shows how his two chosen authors, Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon, responded to these challenges in related but also significantly different ways. He reveals the continuities between their work written before and then after 9/11 and also the radical changes the terrorist attacks effectively compelled. Above all, he shows just how the trauma of 11th of September 2001 made these two writers reassess their work and their field and devise a new template for literature. Theoretically informed and critically astute, Terrorism and Temporality in the Works of Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo represents a significant addition to the growing field of 9/11studies. It is indispensable reading for anyone interested in that field or in the work of these two major American authorsor, for that matter, in the larger issue of the relationship between politics and aesthetics, historical crisis and literary form. It also offers invaluable insights into the enigma of authorship, just how writers manage to speak the unspeakable. -- Richard Gray, FBA, Professor, Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies, University of Essex, UK, and author A Brief History of American Literature and After the Fall: American Literature Since 9/11
The second plane hovers like Zenos Arrow before impact with the South Tower, and time changes. In Terrorism and Temporality in the Works of Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo, James Gourley tracks the shift from cyber-capitals measurement of time in nanoseconds to the convergence of temporality in the Omega Point. Pynchon and DeLillo are our two most time-sensitive novelists, and Gourley deftly shows how their world, and ours, is changed utterly by the events of 9/11. -- Joseph M. Conte, Professor of English, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, USA

Author Bio

James Gourley is a Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts and member of the Writing and Society Research Centre, University of Western Sydney, Australia