Reading Thomas Pynchon's latest novel, Against the Day

One-day conference :
Reading Thomas Pynchon's latest novel, Against the Day

Friday June 1, 2007
Organized by the GRAAT
Universite Francois Rabelais
Tours, France

Call for papers

With the first wave of critical response to Against the Day now abated, and with the June 2008 International Pynchon Conference, which will probably mark the onset of more ambitious academic studies, still months away, it seems to be the right time to acknowledge the event, and to think about what the French academic tradition can bring to the study of the novel. If papers concerned with such necessary and illuminating spadework as critical reception, intertextuality or possible sources are welcome, the emphasis will be put on close textual analysis, especially inasmuch as it is articulated to the question of the reader's position. This position is best described as shifting and unstable, both during reading and along the gradual process by which the critical enterprise attempts slowly to incorporate the novel, just as in the novel itself America becomes gradually incorporated. The aim is not only to delineate possible directions for the critical endeavour, but also to make the most of the indeterminate Zone or Wedge the critical field still is, before the ineluctable imposing of grids.

Please send abstracts of around 250 words to Gilles Chamerois (gilleschamerois@wanadoo.fr) by April 20th, 2007.