Pynchon and Jailbait

[davemarc]

>From the intro to *Slow Learner*, Pynchon riffing on the Beat/post-Beat
movement.  The meat, so to speak, may be in the second paragraph.

     "On the negative side, however, both forms of the movement placed too
much emphasis on youth, including the eternal variety.  Youth of course was
wasted on me at the time, but I bring up the puerility angle again because,
along with imperfectly developed attitudes about sex and death, we may also
note how easily some of my adolescent values were able to creep in and wreck
an otherwise sympathetic character.  Such is the unhappy case with Dennis
Flange, in 'Low-lands."  In a way this is more of a character sketch than a
story.  Old Dennis doesn't 'grow' much in the course of it.  He remains
static, his fantasies become embarrassingly vivd, that's about all that
happens.  A brightening of focus maybe, but no problem resolution and so not
much movement or life.
     "It is no secret nowadays, particularly to women, that many American
males, even those of middle-aged appearance, wearing suits and holding down
jobs, are in fact, incredible as it sounds, still small boys inside.  Flange
is this type of character, although when I wrote this story I thought he was
pretty cool.  He wants children--why isn't made clear---but not at the price
of developing any real life with an adult woman.  His solution to this is
Nerissa, a woman with the size and demeanor of a child.  I can't remember
for sure, but it looks like I wanted some ambiguity here about whether or
not she was only a creature of his fantasies.  It would be easy to say that
Dennis's problem was my problem, and that I was putting it off on him.
Whatever's fair--but the problem *could* have been more general.  At that
time I had no direct experience with either marriage or parenting, and maybe
I was picking up on male attitudes that were then in the air--more
documentably, inside the pages of men's magazines, *Playboy* in particular...."

davemarc