Thomas Pynchon, Vineland

A breather between biggies” (Leonard 1990, 281), “a disappointing book” (Kermode 1990, 3), a “heartbreakingly inferior” novel (Wallace qtd. in Kachka 2013), and several similar opinions were among the earliest descriptions by critics and writers upon the publication of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland in 1990. These scholars did not regard Vineland’s critical and socio-cultural scope and complexity as comparable to its monumental predecessor Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), which had won Pynchon international acclaim as one of the most consequential works of literary postmodernism. However, in this atmosphere of pervasive disappointment among Pynchon aficionados, following a seventeen-year hiatus marked by high expectations, there was also a more favorable, and at times ambivalent, reception of Vineland. The relatively sympathetic reviews largely emphasized features of the novel such as readability, accessibility to readers, engagement with contemporary American politics in the Nixon–Reagan era, and a cautiously optimistic vision of humanity’s prospects grounded in collectivity and communal consciousness. Edward Mendelson observed that the world of Vineland “is richer and more various than the world of almost any American novel in recent memory” (1990, 40). Richard Powers described it as “one of those entertaining, accessible novels that grows harder, richer, more problematic on second reading” (1990, 694, 697).