“’Tis a reckless Debowch of a Game”: Chance and Resistance in Thomas Pynchon’s Novels
This paper seeks to consider games — and more particularly card games and gambling — as an American form of resistance in Thomas Pynchon’s novels. As opposed to agôn, a category of games that Roger Caillois delineates in Man, Play and Games (1958) as “a combat in which equality of chances is artific...
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| Materyal Türü: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Dil: | Anglais |
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Angles
2020
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| Online Erişim: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
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openedition-oai:revues.org:angles_2672 |
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openedition |
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OpenEdition Journal |
| language |
Anglais |
| format |
Article ou chapitre numérique |
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0/Bibliothèque numérique/ 1/Bibliothèque numérique/OpenEdition Journals/ |
| topic |
capitalisme littérature américaine jeu Pynchon Thomas capitalism American literature Pynchon Thomas gambling |
| spellingShingle |
capitalisme littérature américaine jeu Pynchon Thomas capitalism American literature Pynchon Thomas gambling Meresse, Bastien “’Tis a reckless Debowch of a Game”: Chance and Resistance in Thomas Pynchon’s Novels |
| description |
This paper seeks to consider games — and more particularly card games and gambling — as an American form of resistance in Thomas Pynchon’s novels. As opposed to agôn, a category of games that Roger Caillois delineates in Man, Play and Games (1958) as “a combat in which equality of chances is artificially created, in order that the adversaries should confront each other under ideal conditions,” alea encompasses games of chance which are “a strict negation of controlled effort, […] efficacious resort to skill, power, and calculation, and self-control; respect for the rules; the desire to test oneself under conditions of equality.” It will be my contention that alea, in Pynchon’s novels, offers the possibility of an alternative world and becomes a necessary mode of resistance in the face of a plenty-flushed adversity which threatens to hold sway over the American continent. For Pynchon’s players, more often than not cheaters and fraudsters, use such games of chance to fulfil their longing for emancipation and flight, at a time in history when the American continent is about to be mapped by the abstractions of colonial companies and Enlightenment science. Gaming clubs — ranging from taverns in Mason & Dixon to casinos and gambling dens in Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), Against the Day (2006), and Inherent Vice (2009) — can be recognized as heterotopian sites where otherwise dispersed groups of people momentarily gather in order to gain freedom from the ruling few. Although the moralism of Puritan ministers sternly reminded their flocks to refrain from wasting their earnings on rash bets, gambling can thus be envisioned as a way to escape from the hyper-productivity expounded by modernity, intersecting with Walter Benjamin’s discourse on the materialist form of gambling within industrial capitalism. Following Gerda Reith’s and Susan Strange’s arguments in The Age of Chance (1999) and Casino Capitalism (1986), I will further argue that, in the new capitalist economy, Pynchon anticipates in his novels the attention of late capitalism to new areas for capitalization, overseeing both the commodification of idleness and the insinuation into the fabric of existence of the same risk assessment strategy as that applied by capitalism. |
| author |
Meresse, Bastien |
| author_facet |
Meresse, Bastien |
| author_sort |
Meresse, Bastien |
| title |
“’Tis a reckless Debowch of a Game”: Chance and Resistance in Thomas Pynchon’s Novels |
| title_short |
“’Tis a reckless Debowch of a Game”: Chance and Resistance in Thomas Pynchon’s Novels |
| title_full |
“’Tis a reckless Debowch of a Game”: Chance and Resistance in Thomas Pynchon’s Novels |
| title_fullStr |
“’Tis a reckless Debowch of a Game”: Chance and Resistance in Thomas Pynchon’s Novels |
| title_full_unstemmed |
“’Tis a reckless Debowch of a Game”: Chance and Resistance in Thomas Pynchon’s Novels |
| title_sort |
“’tis a reckless debowch of a game”: chance and resistance in thomas pynchon’s novels |
| publisher |
Angles |
| publishDate |
2020 |
| container_title |
URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles |
| url |
https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://doi.org/10.4000/angles.2672 https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://journals.openedition.org/angles/2672 |
| _version_ |
1877293836371230720 |
| spelling |
openedition-oai:revues.org:angles_2672 https://doi.org/10.4000/angles.2672 urn:doi:10.4000/angles.2672 en https://journals.openedition.org/angles/2672 2020-11-11T01:00:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess article info:eu-repo/semantics/article urn:handle:20.500.13089/9n14 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ “’Tis a reckless Debowch of a Game”: Chance and Resistance in Thomas Pynchon’s Novels Angles Société des Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur info:eu-repo/semantics/reference/issn/2274-2042 URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles Meresse, Bastien capitalisme littérature américaine jeu Pynchon Thomas capitalism American literature Pynchon Thomas gambling This paper seeks to consider games — and more particularly card games and gambling — as an American form of resistance in Thomas Pynchon’s novels. As opposed to agôn, a category of games that Roger Caillois delineates in Man, Play and Games (1958) as “a combat in which equality of chances is artificially created, in order that the adversaries should confront each other under ideal conditions,” alea encompasses games of chance which are “a strict negation of controlled effort, […] efficacious resort to skill, power, and calculation, and self-control; respect for the rules; the desire to test oneself under conditions of equality.” It will be my contention that alea, in Pynchon’s novels, offers the possibility of an alternative world and becomes a necessary mode of resistance in the face of a plenty-flushed adversity which threatens to hold sway over the American continent. For Pynchon’s players, more often than not cheaters and fraudsters, use such games of chance to fulfil their longing for emancipation and flight, at a time in history when the American continent is about to be mapped by the abstractions of colonial companies and Enlightenment science. Gaming clubs — ranging from taverns in Mason & Dixon to casinos and gambling dens in Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), Against the Day (2006), and Inherent Vice (2009) — can be recognized as heterotopian sites where otherwise dispersed groups of people momentarily gather in order to gain freedom from the ruling few. Although the moralism of Puritan ministers sternly reminded their flocks to refrain from wasting their earnings on rash bets, gambling can thus be envisioned as a way to escape from the hyper-productivity expounded by modernity, intersecting with Walter Benjamin’s discourse on the materialist form of gambling within industrial capitalism. Following Gerda Reith’s and Susan Strange’s arguments in The Age of Chance (1999) and Casino Capitalism (1986), I will further argue that, in the new capitalist economy, Pynchon anticipates in his novels the attention of late capitalism to new areas for capitalization, overseeing both the commodification of idleness and the insinuation into the fabric of existence of the same risk assessment strategy as that applied by capitalism. Cet article propose d’envisager le jeu — et plus particulièrement les jeux de cartes et d’argent — comme une forme de résistance proprement américaine dans les romans de Thomas Pynchon. À l’inverse de l’agôn, groupe de jeux que Roger Caillois définit dans Les jeux et les hommes (1967) comme « un combat où l’égalité des chances est artificiellement créée pour que les antagonistes s’affrontent dans des conditions idéales, » l’aléa du jeu de hasard, parce qu’il « constitue la négation stricte d’un effort contrôlé, […] le recours à l’adresse, à la puissance, au calcul ; le respect de la règle ; le désir de se mesurer à armes égales, » est imaginé par le romancier comme un monde alternatif qui offre un espace de liberté. Le joueur, souvent tricheur et fraudeur chez Pynchon, peut déverser son désir de dépassement et d’échappée des normes sociales qui ordonnent l’Amérique, au moment où le continent s’apprête à basculer dans les cartes des Lumières et des grandes compagnies coloniales. Cet article propose examiner d’abord la façon dont les terrains de jeu — casinos, auberges, tripots — s’organisent autour du concept d’hétérotopie. Avec des règles qui leur sont propres, en contrepoint des cartographies officielles, ces espaces marginaux recentrent sur la carte du monde, le temps d’une partie, le joueur dont le comportement est déviant par rapport à la norme exigée. Le jeu d’argent, oiseux et nécessairement dissident aux yeux de la morale puritaine, devient alors une façon d’échapper à la rationalisation économique du monde : à travers l’étude de la modernité industrielle esquissée par Walter Benjamin, nous montrons comment le joueur dé-joue les désirs de productivité du capital. A la lumière des thèses de Gerda Reith dans The Age of Chance (1999) et Susan Strange dans Casino Capitalism (1986), cet article s’intéresse enfin à la marchandisation du hasard par le capital : tandis que l’intersection entre la technologie et le jeu crée de nouveaux types d’environnement contrôlés par l’industrie du divertissement, le personnage pynchonien est aux prises avec un marché mondial, où la finance, erratique et imprévisible, s’est transformée en vaste jeu de hasard. |