The Bouncing Information World:Thomas Pynchon’s Etropic Space

Thomas Pynchon is a typical American postmodern writer.While he uses some postmodern artist methods in his works,he also combines some scientific knowledge such as cybernetics,information theory with the theme of his works.Among lots of works of his,entropy is a topic which has a higher frequency of occurrence.In Pynchon’s early essays and later works,there are many different degrees of manifestation.Among them,the short story,Entropy and his second novel The Crying of Lot 49 are core novels of entropy,both of them are deeply influenced by cybernetics and information theory,including American historian Henry Adams’s analyses on the relationship between entropy and social history,the ideas on cybernetics and information theory of physicist Shannon and mathematician Wiener.According to their theories,Pynchon put his two novels under the topic of entropy on information theory. Pynchon points out the entopic phenomena and the possibilities of anti-entropy theoretially in Entropy,that is,to get out of the closed world,while he combines the American status quo in the 1960s with theory in The Crying of Lot 49. After the in-depth discussion on the entropic phenomena,Pynchon gives metaphorical information the feature of anti-entropy as an existence of indeterminacy,wich changes the heroine’s thinking patterns, thus stimulating people’s further exploration, keeping the world of information bouncing and avoiding the death of system.To get out of the closed world and keeping the world of information bouncing come down in one continuous line,and the latter also has been guided by the principle of postmodern indeterminacy in the meantime.The key issue to solve is that how the metaphoric information can keep information bouncing.The innovation of this thesis is to focus on the discussion about the entropic phenomena and the method of anti-entropy in the world of information,instead of limiting to the discussion on the phenomena of entropy in a closed system.Meanwhile,I will combine the American status quo in the 1960s with the topic,adding some factors about history,thus combing the anti-entropy with history.In the conclusion,I will analyse Pynchon’s postmodern indeterminacy deeply and how people should do in the society which has an entropic trend.