The schizoid ethics of black humor: Southern, fariña, and pynchon

This essay argues that the literary materials grouped together in the early 1960s under the rubric of "black humor" frequently attended thematically to acts of interracial identification. In addition to examining critically the impulses motivating persons to engage in such imitative procedures, the prose fictions of Terry Southern, Richard Fariña, and Thomas Pynchon also explored the virtues of an alternate model of subjectivity, one not predicated on the notion of acquiring a stable self. In pursuing both topics, these authors repeatedly took recourse to certain forms of American popular culture, including superhero comic books and silent screen comedy.