The
question of land and land-ownership forms a constant thematic in Thomas
Pynchon’s work, and it can be traced back to his early fiction. In this
paper, I’ll focus on how Pynchon uses the land as a site of political
and economic struggle between landowners and various propertyless people
– squatters, indigenous peoples, refugees, settlers, hippies and
anarchists. The analyses extend from The Crying of Lot 49 to Pynchon’s latest novel, Bleeding Egde,
where the struggle takes place in the immaterial spaces of the
internet. To understand the role of land in Pynchon’s work as both
common and private, both sacred and commercialised, both material and
virtual, I’ll use the notion of common from Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Commonwealth
(2009). My aim is to point out the recurring moments in Pynchon’s
fiction where common is the origin of wealth, and how private property
stems from its exploitation. In Pynchon, however, the common always
survives because of its versatility, recreating its form over and over
again.KEYWORDS: Cognitive capitalism, common, land, landed property, real estate, developer, new economy, multitude, heterotopia, California