Though computers have come to rapidly dominate twenty-first century life, it appears that contemporary literature has not yet found a suitable mode of expression with which to meet the mimetic challenge of representing them. Looking back at our immediate literary inheritance in search of a workable model for some sort of stylistic mode that can meet this challenge, my thesis alights on the writer Thomas Pynchon, whose work has borne witness to digital technology at practically every stage of its development. I argue that what makes Pynchon’s novels succeed in this area is that they go about representing the digital world not by merely describing computers, but by instead self-reflexively highlighting aspects of their own medium which already most closely approximate or anticipate computers. These aspects, which I term reflexive correlatives, place the printed book we are reading and the computing technology being represented on the same common denominator – namely, that both are kinds of information technology. Rather than simply describing computers, or showing characters using computers, these novels operate themselves like computers and inundate the reader with narrative information in order to capture as directly as possible the way that modern information technology effusively processes and spouts data.

In my introduction, I examine the unique relationship between Thomas Pynchon’s work and digital technology, especially the internet. I also unveil my theory of the reflexive correlative, rooting it in wider debates about realism, metafiction, and postmodernism which form the larger context for Pynchon’s corpus. My first main chapter deals with the themes of code and cryptography. I argue that Pynchon uses the hermeneutic difficulty or ‘codedness’ of his text as a reflexive correlative for both cryptographic code and computer code, and that he foregrounds the individual alphabetical letters that make up his text to use them as a reflexive correlative for the way computers and ciphers deal with language. In my second chapter, I argue that the way Pynchon portrays his own language as a combinatorics made up of permutable units serves as a reflexive correlative for the way that digital computers store data as closed sets of information. In my third chapter, I further explore the concept of closed or finite sets, shifting my focus to Pynchon’s treatment of set theory, a sub-discipline within mathematics. I argue that Pynchon uses diegetic levels and fourth-wall breaks as reflexive correlatives for the transcending of the finite set in set theory. In my fourth and final main chapter, I explore feedback, an important concept in cybernetics, as well as Pynchon’s influence on William Gibson’s concept of ‘cyberspace’. I argue that one reason why reflexive correlatives are an apt way to represent the digital world is that digital computers themselves can be considered self-reflexive machines. In my conclusion, I attempt to take a ‘bigger picture’ view of Pynchon’s place within literary history, placing particular emphasis on twenty-first century literary history. I speculate on the future of digital technology, its place in future literature, and how the reflexive correlative may figure within this future.