Peter Coviello Publishes “Vineland Reread”
Prof. Coviello's book takes on "hardly anybody's favorite Pynchon novel."
Professor and Director of Graduate Studies of English Peter Coviello's latest book, Vineland Reread (Columbia University Press) considers Thomas Pynchon's Vineland, the long-awaited follow-up to Gravity's Rainbow. Although not as popular as Gravity's Rainbow or Pynchon's subsequent novels, like Mason & Dixon, Vineland, Coviello argues, is an important reflection of trying political moments such as our current one.
Vineland Reread is a "penetrating and nuanced work of literary criticism" according to a review in Publisher's Weekly. Coviello "[departs] from visions of Pynchon as the arch-postmodernist, erudite and obscure, [and] discloses an author far more companionable and humane," as the publisher's synopsis says.
Prof. Coviello also recently published a piece about Vineland in the Boston Review that considers its relevance to the present and reevaluates its place in the American literary imagination.