At a Loss: The Postmodern Quests in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 and Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Potsdam, course: HS: From Poe to Akunin: Highlights of the international Mystery Story in literature and film, language: English, abstract: This paper is building up on postmodern patterns of fragmentation, loneliness and disorientation. The Quest is a central storytelling technique - in times where traditional ways of living and social constellations fade and the grand narratives have lost their guiding functions, people have to mind-map their own routes through a fagmentary world. The paper establishes the quest form in the 1966 book by Pynchon and draws lines of tradition to Jarmusch’s 2005 Browken Flowers.