“Remembering Is the Essence of What I Am”: Thomas Pynchon and the Politics of Nostalgia

Thomas Pynchon’s two most recent works, Inherent Vice (2009) and Bleeding Edge (2013), have proven resistant to many of the critical approaches traditionally applied to his fiction. In recent years, a number of ways of reading late Pynchon have been proposed; this essay contributes to this ongoing re-evaluation by situating Inherent Vice and Bleeding Edge as nostalgic works in terms of both genre and content. These are novels in which nostalgia is seen as both affect and effect, that is as a personal emotion and a political force. Nostalgia here is not simply an individual response to change, but has a potentially counter-intuitive political impact. Rather than operating as a conservative or even reactionary force, Pynchonian nostalgia offers a utopian reminder of alternate social and political possibilities in the face of neo-liberal hegemony.