Leopold Maurer’s graphic novel Miller & Pynchon (2012; first published in German in 2009) is an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel Mason & Dixon (1997). As an adaptation, Maurer’s work “betrays” Pynchon’s in the sense of revealing or showing signs of its source. But even its title shows that Maurer’s work also betrays Pynchon’s by being an unfaithful, two-faced adaptation.
This paper argues that adaptation is a form of hypertextuality, wherein an original source text (the hypotext) is transformed by a later text (the hypertext) (Genette 1997 [1982]). An adaptation is a massive and officially stated (Genette 1997 [1982]) or deliberate, announced, and extended transcoding of another text (Hutcheon 2006). The word “adaptation” refers both to the hypertext produced by the transformation of the hypotext and to the process of creation and reception of the hypertext. Following Hutcheon’s theory of adaptation (2006), this paper will offer an approach to analysing Maurer’s adaptation that is structured around a series of questions: What is (an) adaptation? Who is adapting and why? How is the adaptation received by audiences? And where and when does the adaptation appear?
Recognizing and reading a text as an adaptation means reading it in relation to another text that it repeats but does not replicate, which means also that “change is inevitable” (Hutcheon 2006, xvi), which means that absolute faithfulness is impossible. An awareness of Maurer’s Miller & Pynchon as a creative adaptation results in an understanding and interpretation of the text informed by perceived similarities with and differences from Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon. But this adaptation from prose literature (associated with “telling”) to comics literature (associated with “telling and showing”) also helps us to understand adaptation as a process whose governing principle is the corruption of the original work.