SLOW LEARNER

[dbh at mail.idt.net]

RMoodyCom at aol.com wrote:
>But then I really LOVE Lot 49, and TP all but writes it off in
> the introduction.

RMoody, I agree wholeheartedly.  This must have shocked many readers,
and I'm certain that TRP meant that.  He is, however, mistaken.
In that introduction, which I will not quote, he offers various
criteria, in accordance with which he condemns CL49.  These criteria are
emotional, social, anything but literary.  Similarly, he offers advice
to writers, including such things as his admonition not to use the
thesaurus to spruce up vocabulary.

Pynchon does things in CL49 which make him one of the major creators of
literature.  Those things, however, are not those which seem important
to  him.  Similarly, Tarkovsky's writing on his films is unreadable. It
is all strictly content-based and entirely beside the point.  Pynchon
isn't a great novelist because his opinions are liberal (or
conservative, or in correspondence to any other set of views).  He is a
great novelist because he can take whatever views and put them into a
literary form which is their intricate but consistent embodiment.  In
CL49, Pynchon may have forgotten all he had learnt; in doing so, he fell
back upon suppressed but astoundingly advanced literary sensibility. 
CL49 is far superior to V in this respect, and Pynchon's most compelling
point in the introduction to Slow Learner (here come the irate
responses) is his embarrassment at present such poor stories.

=-DBH
[Incidentally, the thesaurus advice is "process" advice, and thus
inapplicable.  People write differently.  Granted, he describes that
process in a manner that sounds superficial, but I can certainly
conceive of a novel whose basic concept would require vocabulary, in the
mouth of a character or of a narrator, which would force the author to
use a thesaurus in just this way.  Also, judicious use of a thesaurus in
general is beyond condemnation - why must every word come to mind
naturally, rather than evoke a natural reaction (that's the word!) when
encountered via the useful tool of a thesaurus?]