Narratives of the rocket: Chabon's "amnesiac" revisitation of Pynchon's posthuman zone

Collado-Rodríguez, Francisco (Universidad de Zaragoza)

Resumen: This work explores Michael Chabon's use in Moonglow of notions related to the uncertainty of memories, categorical thinking, and historiographic metafiction, and the intertextual connections existing between his novel and Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Both the narrator's grandfather in Chabon's book and the protagonist of Pynchon''s masterpiece share the same quest for the ethically ambiguous rocket when WW2 is coming to its end in Europe. In both novels, the quest highlights its representational rather than actual value thanks to the use of some strategies that ultimately seem to put into question our capacity to know the past and its present consequences in reliable terms. They become a warning that epistemological difficulties should not discourage us from looking for the historical truth and, thus, make the necessary ethical choices.

Idioma: Inglés

DOI: 10.1080/00111619.2019.1650710

Año: 2020

Publicado en: Critique - Bolingbroke Society 61, 1 (2020), 91-103
ISSN: 0011-1619

Factor impacto SCIMAGO: 0.233 - Literature and Literary Theory (Q1)

Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/DGA/H03-17R
Financiación: info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MINECO/FFI2015-63506-P

Tipo y forma: Article (Published version)

Área (Departamento): Área Filología Inglesa (Dpto. Filolog.Inglesa y Alema.)