Somewhere near the beginning of this incisive critical study of perhaps the most elusive and to some minds structurally disordered of living writers Molly Hite notes that the idea of order has always fascinated novelists. She attributes this to the genres being a hybrid committed as it is on the one hand to a rigorous teleology in which events exist for the sake of resolution and on the other to imitating a world that stubbornly refuses to add up. The teleological impetus of narrative she notes reflects ampampquota Godordered universeampampquot while the mimetic tendency describes ampampquota mancentered world.ampampquot And because the two world views are irreconcilable they pose a dilemmathe dilemma that Pynchon treats satirically in his three novels that the alternative to theology is paranoia.