In one encyclopedic novel after another, Thomas Pynchon has reconceptualized historical periods that he sees as culturally definitive. Examining Pynchon's entire body of work, David Cowart offers an engaging, metahistorical reading of V.; an exhaustive analysis of the influence of German culture in Pynchon's early work, with particular emphasis on "Gravity's Rainbow"; and a critical spectroscopy of those dark stars, "Mason & Dixon" and "Against the Day." He defends the California fictions "The Crying of Lot 49," "Vineland," and" Inherent Vice" as" roman fleuve" chronicling the decade in which the American tapestry began to unravel.