Elective affinities. ...to fold onto each other two texts that have similar diagrams and thus to open up a field of intricate resonances: Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon (New York: Holt, 1997), a text about the genesis of America, and Michel Serres's Genesis (Genesis. Trans. G. James & J. Nielson, Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1995), a text about the science & philosophy of surveying.

Dept. of American Literature and Culture
University of Cologne
hanjo.berressem@uni-koeln.de

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Works Cited: Serres Reads Pynchon

Adorno, Theodor and Max Horkheimer. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. J. Cumming. New York: Verso, 1979.

Cilliers, Paul. Complexity and Postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems. New York: Routledge, 1998.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, Helen R. Lane. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1983.

Guattari, Félix. Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm. Trans. P. Bains and J. Pefanis. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1995.

Serres, Michel. Genesis. Trans. G. James and J. Nielson. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1995.

---. Hermès III--La traduction. Paris: Minuit, 1974.

---. La Naissance de la Physique: Dans le Texte de Lucrèce: Fleuves et Turbulences. Paris: Minuit, 1977.

Whitman, Walt. "Democratic Vistas." Complete Poetry and Selected Prose. Ed. J. E. Miller. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959. 455-501.

Works Cited: Pynchon Reads Serres

Krafton-Minkel, Walter. Subterranean Worlds: 100,000 Years of Dragons, Dwarfs, the Dead, Lost Races & UFOs from Inside the Earth. Port Townsend, WA: Loompanics Unlimited, 1989.

Lacan, Jacques. Écrits. New York: Norton, 1977.

Pynchon, Thomas. V. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1963.

---. Gravity's Rainbow. New York: Viking, 1973.

---. Vineland. Boston: Little Brown, 1990.

---. Mason & Dixon. New York: Holt, 1997.