Pynchonian

comparative more Pynchonian · superlative most Pynchonian

1. Of or relating to Thomas Pynchon (b. 1937), American novelist.
2. Densely convoluted, verbose and full of allusion.

plural Pynchonians

1. An admirer or scholar of the works of the American novelist Thomas Pynchon (b. 1937).

   Largely dismissed by tenured Pynchonians when it was first published, Vineland now seems to have been underrated.

   1997 July, Rick Moody, “Surveyors of the Enlightenment”, in William Whitworth, editor, The Atlantic Monthly, volume 280, number 1, Boston, Mass.: The Atlantic Monthly Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 108, column 1

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   Academic feminists have for a decade worried that their “acceptance,” when, how, and to what extent it has occurred, is a form of repressive tolerance, a pretense on the part of departments of English that their enterprise could be smothered and subsumed under an expanded definition of “institutional criticism.” And though the rhetoric of Pynchon studies takes much the same line of argument, I suggest that the primary reasons for Pynchonians’ anxieties have less to do with repressive tolerance than with, for one thing, the idea of the academy as mausoleum and, for another, the nostalgia consequent upon the death of the author—a nostalgia complicated in Pynchon’s case by the nagging suspicion that it is we who have killed him.

   1992, Michael Bérubé, “‘Surely to Pynchon’s Horror’: Canonicity as Conspiracy Theory”, in Marginal Forces/Cultural Centers: Tolson, Pynchon, and the Politics of the Canon, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, →ISBN, pages 298–299

   Against the Day (2006), Cowart demonstrates in chapter 6, has been written against this condition, in an attempt to open up the one-language of national history to tenses and modalities, alternatives and not-yet-passed pasts that may still bode well for our common future. It is a future, in fact, that Pynchon has "actually"—"indicatively"—written into existence. For, stresses Cowart in the conclusion, the genealogist is also a visionary. What is more, the vision is shared by the Pynchonians following in his footsteps, many of whom are important authors already.

   2013 winter, Christian Moraru, “David Cowart. Thomas Pynchon and the Dark Passages of History. […]”, in John N. Duvall, editor, Modern Fiction Studies, volume 59, number 4, Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press for the Department of English, Purdue University, →ISSN, →OCLC, “Book Reviews” section, pages 871–872