LOT 49

[LARSSON at VAX1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU]

B. Gilmore writes:
"On another note, someone recently noted that Pynchon's naming of
Billy Barf and the Vomitones didn't ring true.  I repeatedly had that
feeling while reading Vineland: jokes just weren't funny or very slightly
"missed."  Overall, the novel fell far short of what I regard as Pynchon's
best work, Lot 49.  I teach Lot 49 to high school student because I regard
it as the near perfect twentieth century novel."

I agree that LOT 49 is worth teaching for a number of reasons--its brevity
being a not insignificant one.  (It also neatly encapsulates several Pynchon
themes and marks a shift in his career from the late Modernism of V. to
Postmodernity.)

But I also have to agree with TRP himself that it's his weakest work.  Baby
Igor, for example, is as out of tune as anything in VINELAND.  And while I
think he's being a little too hard on himself, I have to agree in essence
with TRP's own assessment in the intro. to SLOW LEARNER: a short story
"which was marketed as a 'novel,' and in which I seem to have forgotten most
of what I'd learned up till then."

If one is looking for "perfection," V. is really his most finished work in
its elegant structure and elaboration of theme.  But there's a certain dry-
ness and even (if you will) deadness that begins to change with LOT 49.

On a related matter--Some time ago, in re: VINELAND, a poster complained
about the later novel, claiming that "at least the Lady V. was real."

Are you sure?  She only appears to us in Stencil's chapters, narratives that
have been admittedly "Stencilized," and it seems as though she could be a
figment of Stencil's overactive imagination.  What she STANDS FOR is certainly
real enough, though.

--Don Larsson, Mankato State U., MN