GRAAT Anglophone Studies Thomas Pynchon Against the Day issue

Groupe de Recherches Anglo-Américaines de Tours

ANGLOPHONE

STUDIES

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(Literature, Civilization, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Linguistics)

GRAAT: Pronounce [greit]

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"Even Pynchon’s American Idiot and trickster seems eventually to bypass individuality: returning home after much wandering, Reef Traverse, trying to stay out of trouble on Ellis Island, “remained indecisively mute long enough to have a large letter I, for Idiot, chalked on his back” (1074). But an unknown “Obliterator,” whose face cannot quite be seen, comes along and charitably wipes off what is also the letter of the first-person pronoun. The idiot and simulator will go through the border, an immigrant and an exile in his own country, without the burden or comfort of a nameable individual self. Against the liberal injunction of autonomy, the idiot “deconstructs what is proper” (“déconstruit le propre,” Deshoulières 171), undermining propriety, property, and what is proper to a subject."

Anne Battesti