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chon expresses cultural dissent by his elusive near-anonymity, so alien
to our literary culture, and Gravity s Rainbow drastically violates what
remains of literary and social decorum with stomach-churning pages
of Slothrop s trip-down-the-toilet nightmare, Brigadier Pudding s copro-
philia, Mexico and Bodine s disruption of officialdom at the dinner table
with revolting jokes, and Mexico s urinary dissolution of a meeting of
the powerful (ibid.: 173). Mendelson uses Bakhtin s ideas to argue that
these violations are re-creative as well as destructive. Pynchon s focus on
the postwar proliferation of new systems and structures, made possible
by the collapse of social structures that have grown obsolete, achieves,
unlike earlier encyclopedists, a scope implying a new international cul-
ture, created by the technologies of instant communication and the econ-
omy of world markets (ibid.: 165). Gravity s Rainbow also moves beyond the
representation of human identity by the last major encyclopedist, James
Joyce. The book provides an encyclopedic presentation of the world from
a perspective that permits inclusion of fields of data and realms of experi-
ence that Joyce s perspective excludes (ibid.: 179). Pynchon s characters
do not live in their interior worlds, as Joyce s do, but in their work and in
their relations to large social and economic systems (ibid.: 179). Yet the
book insists that we are not determined, as the inanimate rocket is deter-
mined, unless, paradoxically, we choose to be (ibid.: 185). Roger Mexico
and the Counterforce learn something of the world processes shaping their
lives but in the end are unable or unwilling to do very much about it
(ibid.: 189), and Slothrop loses all relation to the world (ibid.: 191), but the
reader gains some of the knowledge needed to act freely outside the world
of writing (ibid.: 192).
486 Poetics Today 31:3
3.2. Kharpertian: Menippean Satire
Kharpertian (1985: 3), like Mendelson, notes the value of categoriza-
tion for interpretation: The problem of genre is . . . more than trivial,
because it is . . . one thing to read Pynchon s fictions as novels . . . it is
quite another to read them as satires. Critics have largely avoided or
mistaken Pynchon s genre, and without a sound generic premise, the
resultant interpretive and analytical commentary can be judged only as
problematic (Kharpertian 1990: 20). Kharpertian (1985: 3) concedes that
Pynchon has created such polymorphous fictions that a unitary generic
identification would seem to be an exercise in Procrustean folly. Yet he
goes on to describe Pynchon s fictions as Menippean satires and Pynchon
as, first and foremost, a satirist. His study serves to construct the generic
model that informs Pynchon s fiction and employs that model as the orga-
nizing principle of its textual readings (Kharpertian 1990: 13). Thus the
model aims to reflect both the writer s creative processes and the reader s
interpretive ones.
This aim leads Kharpertian (ibid.: 14 15, 22 24) to attend more closely
to Pynchon criticism than does Mendelson, focusing on genre studies
(including Mendelson s). Menippean satire differs functionally from the
novel, even when sharing its form. Here, fantasy does not signify a literal,
referential, or existential fact but releases satire s aggressive impulses
as well as providing a form for its realization (ibid.: 109 10). Other genre
categorizations fail to take adequate account of Pynchon s varieties of par-
ody (ibid.: 22 23). Unlike Mendelson, Kharpertian is dealing with a well-
known genre (satire) and a subgenre (Menippean satire) moderately well
known among experts though unfamiliar to ordinary readers. He there-
fore proceeds to review some critical analyses of these categories (ibid.:
24 42), critiquing, boiling down, and synthesizing material to develop a
folk theory ( model ) of Menippean satire, which he then applies to Pyn-
chon s texts as a basis for his detailed reading.
Kharpertian begins with a partial prototype of Menippean satire (that
is, again, a summary representation of form and function) and a list of
its (authorial) exemplars: Its structure is loose, mixing seriocomic prose
and verse, and its principal emphasis is on the forms of variety (ibid.) In
European literature, the major practitioners are its originator Menippus,
Varro, Seneca, Petronius, Lucian, Apuleius, Boethius, Erasmus, Rabelais,
Burton, Walton, Swift, Voltaire, Sterne, Landor, Peacock, and Carroll; in
American literature, Melville, West, Gaddis, Vonnegut, and Barth use the
form in differing degrees (ibid.: 13). This list helps characterize the sub-
genre, but Kharpertian does not examine any authors other than Pynchon.
His further discussion of the subject begins with a somewhat more
"
Sinding Genres, Cognitive Category Theory, and Gravity s Rainbow 487
specific prototype for the original exemplars: Originated by the Cynic
Menippus . . . these satires were written primarily in prose with verse
interludes and were used to ridicule philosophical opponents. . . . Varro
introduced Menippean satire into Latin and wrote narratives of fantastic
adventure told in the first person (ibid.: 29). The main features ascribed
to the genre by scholars of classical literature are seriocomic . . . prose and
verse, extensive parodies, popular proverbs and speech, encyclopedism,
fantastic narratives, and epideictic variety (ibid.). Eugene Kirk s (1980)
description of (classical and Renaissance) Menippean satire s style, struc-
ture, elements, and theme is also in part a feature list but has aspects of
prototype and theory representations. For Kirk, the chief mark of the
genre s style was unconventional diction, and in outward structure
it was a medley, usually of alternating prose and verse, sometimes a
jumble of flagrantly digressive narrative. Its topical elements included
outlandish fictions . . . and extreme distortions of argument, and its theme
bore on right learning or right belief (Kharpertian 1990: 29).
Kharpertian then turns to his main concern, namely, folk-theoretical
aspects of the genre category, involving the formal and functional relations
among the parts. He focuses on the relationship between satire and Menip-
pean satire and how to define them. As all definitions of satire center irre-
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