TRP's Blurbs

[LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu]

ed writes:
"I've been fascinated for quite a while
between the apparent contrast in tone and artistic priorities between
"high" Pynchon (V, Lot 49, GR) and his dust-jacket cottage-industry.
Pynchon straightforwardly praises morality, beauty, and romanticism, all
artistic values his novels elaborately undercut and complicate (while
deploying them marvelously at the same time, of course). I, for one,
tend to think that these blurbs, along with recent shorter writings
like "Nearer My Couch to Thee" and "Is it OK to Be a Luddite?", indicate
that the simpler (that's a relative word) style and moral structure
of "Vineland" reflect a genuine sea-change in Pynchon's artistic values
and practice. And prove that the introduction to Slow Learner isn't an
elaborate pomo hoax, as Messrs. McHoul and Wills would have it. Unless,
of course, *all* of these snippets are part of a broader Pynchon-
conspiracy to portray himself as a down-home, folksy, romantic kind of
guy, only to knock us over the head with a millennial "Finnegans Wake"
(we can only hope)...

Any other thoughts out there?"


For all our attempts to valorize P as an utra-post-modernist, he's always
been an amibiguous writer with a romantic streak--the anti-romanticism
coming more in the form of a critique of the byproducts of some of its
more intellectualized forms that (eg.) result in Nazi ideology.  But look
at his use of/attitudes toward drugs in his works--downright moralistic
in V. and LOT 49, hierarchical in GR (organic drugs=good; chemical drugs=
bad, maybe), and sort of freewheeling in VINELAND.  Even after reading
his "Sloth" piece several times, I'm not quite sure how he feels about it,
except that it was interesting that his point of reference was not the
Calvinist fathers of his own ancestry or even the Jamestown colony, but
Ben Franklin and the Philadelphians (prepping for the Mason-Dixon book?).
I suppose it "means" that P continues to squeeze out of the boxes we
assign him.

He's always been an enthusiastic blurbspieler, though.  Look at his 
endoresement of NOG: "The novel of bullshit is dead!"  Now *there's* a
'60's kind of overstatement.  If P
s  blub voice changes somewhat with the times, I suppose it should be
no surprise.

--Don Larsson, Mankato State U., MN