Conspiracy paranoia in the postmodern age: The study of Thomas Pynchon and Haruki Murakami

This dissertation explores the conception of conspiracy paranoia of the postmodern age through three novels of each Thomas Pynchon and Haruki Murakami. The primary texts discussed are Pynchon's V. (1961), The Crying of Lot 49 (1965), and Gravity's Rainbow (1973), and Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase (1982), Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Book One & Two 1994, Book Three 1995). Besides discussing conspiracy paranoia, this dissertation looks into the attitude of reading them in terms of postmodern conspiracy paranoia.; This dissertation consists of seven chapters. The Introduction discusses what conspiracy paranoia is and makes it clear why it is closely connected to postmodernism, referring to some critics of conspiracy paranoia, Timothy Melley, Martin Parker, and Peter Knight. In Chapters 1 and 2, the conspiracy paranoia of the main characters is discussed in reference to what is defined in the Introduction. In Chapters 3 to 5, the discussion moves to reading these novels. Pointing out that the general reading of these novels aims at inferring coherent meaning or organizing them rationally, these chapters discuss that the reader tries to adapt these novels to the traditional reading mode. That discussion is supported by Roland Rarthes's "The Death of the Author" and "From Work to Text." Then, it is made clear that, concerning those novels, the description of conspiracy functions to help the reader to carry out the process. Chapter 6 defines the reader's belief in order, which makes him look for coherent meaning of novels, referring mainly to Martin Parker; reading novels in the traditional mode is to make his own rationally coherent story out of them. In those six novels, that reading parallels the main characters' search for conspiracy. Then, Chapter 6 concludes that the meaning of these novels remain deferred the same as the conspiracy described in them though Murakami's novels seem to reveal the conspiracy unlike Pynchon's novels. In the Conclusion, applying the postmodern definition of deferred meaning to this dissertation itself, it is declared that this dissertation is not only about postmodernism but also embodying it.