What does Pynchon think about Lot 49?

[Brian D. McCary]

Last Thursday, John Mascaro suggested:  

"So, as a means of understanding your reaction (i.e. not as a way of 
*challenging* it), I wonder if you could elaborate a little, at 
least by pointing out the sections you find *clunky.*  Or maybe a 
little more of how you conclude that some of it doesn't meet P's 
standards as you have intuited them from the intro."

...which seems fair enough.  I thought Don did a great job outlining 
the two most obvious problems, that of thin characters and telling, 
not showing.  It is the latter which mostly inspires the feeling of 
clunky to me, but I will try to get more specific later.  Sorry, but 
to build a reasonable case, I'm going to have to get long winded.

Assuming one takes the Slow Learner intro at face value (clearly 
another equally valid topic for debate) I would like to take a half 
dozen or so of his points, and cite places where they apply to Lot 
49, as well as areas where they don't in V or GR.  Of course, the 
weakness of this strategy is that it only proves that Lot 49 has 
weak areas and V and GR have strong ones.

Disclaimer:  this is not intended to show that Lot 49 is a bad 
novel.  It's a fine one, and I've read it a sufficient number of 
times to know that I like it and I couldn't write a better one.  My 
purpose here is to take a guess at what Pynchon meant by his comment 
at the end of the intro to Slow Learner.  

Death:  

"When we speak of 'seriousness' in fiction ultimately we are talking 
about an attitude toward death.... In 'The Small Rain' characters 
are found dealing with death in pre­adult ways.  They evade: they 
sleep late, they seek euphemisms.  Worst of all, they hook it up 
with sex."

Lot 49:  Two people die.  When Oedipa hears about Pierce's death, 
she tries to feel drunk, and that's about it.  The cause of death is 
never made clear.  The dead man's last words wrt Oedipa?  Sexual: 
she won't be easy.  After Driblette dies (disappears, really, I 
don't recall them finding a body) the wake by Bortz & students 
appears no different to Bortz' wife than the previous on­going patio 
pouring.  Death in the play is cartoonish and extreme.  Nobody in 
the book responds any more to death than they would to trading in 
their car. 

Contrast this with Fausto's reactions in V, or Slothrop's reaction 
to Tantivy's death.  In fact, much of GR concerns itself with people 
grappling with impending doom.  Even given that V has it's own 
cartoon quality about death in some areas, I think the characters, 
large and small, react to it more completly.  See also Andrew's 
thoughts on Children Preparing to Die for Beyond the Zero.

Sex:

"You'll notice that toward the end of the story, some kindof sexual 
encounter appears to take place, though you'd never know it from the 
text.  The language suddenly gets too fancy to read." 

Lot 49:  The Baby Igor seduction scene is funny and clever, but it 
isn't much more clear than the Small Rain scene.  Why build an 
entire scene around the seduction, to the extent that Pierce's last 
words concerned it, but fail to paint it clearly? 

The fetishistic nature of the sex in V makes describing the act more 
difficult, but even the description of Rachel with her car in the 
moonlight has more sensuality than the Baby Igor scene, and it 
establishes a major theme at the same time.  GR?  Umm, Brigadier 
Pudding, Bianca, Katje at the battery?  Need I say more?

Complexity of Plot:

(wrt "Under the Rose") "Readers may also feel shorted because of 
how, more than anyone, the masterful John le Carre has upped the 
ante for the whole genre.  Today we expect a complexity of plot and 
depth of character which are missing from my effort here."  OK, so 
maybe he's pulling my leg here.  le Carre?  I dunno.  But the point 
applies fairly clearly to the story and to...

Lot 49:  Deceptively simple plot.  An executrix (like it) thinks she 
discovers a plot related to but not (as far as we ever see) 
impacting the will she is executing.  Her attempts to prove or 
disprove it are inconclusive.  Her life doesn't fall apart, although 
she appears to loose her husband.  We are told she undergoes a 
change, but the change is neither obvious in her actions or 
obviously important.  All we know is that she might ask fewer 
questions towards the end. 

I feel no compelling desire to prove that V or GR have complex 
plots.  

Surreal Elements:  

"Another influence in 'Under the Rose', too recent for me to abuse 
then to the extent I have done since, is surrealism.... Having as 
yet virtually no access to my dream life, I missed the main point of 
the movement, and became fascinated instead with the simple idea 
that one could combine inside the same frame elements not normally 
found together to produce illogical and startling effects.  What I 
had to learn later on was the necessity of managing this procedure 
with some degree of care and skill: any old combination of details 
will not do." 

Lot 49:  See, for instance, the night journey, which is dreamlike, 
with elements which only hook up along one dimension:  W.A.S.T.E.  
Or the Hillarius faces.  Or Winthrop Tremain's swastika factory.  
The oddities of Lot 49 are odd by their juxtapositions, but, on 
further examination, have no other relationship besides a possible 
connection to Tristero.  Which iscertainly OK for a book about 
Tristero.  However, the totemic or fetishistic or symbolic objects 
or what have you in V like the clockwork eye, the dentures, the 
crucifix hair comb, even the alligator hunt, are all more restrained 
in their scope and more connected thematically, yet also are more 
outrageous.  Again, it seems like GR speaks for itself with respect 
to Surrealism. 

I also lump the scattered references to S/M throughout Lot 49 in 
this same area.  They serve no obvious purpose, although the Sick 
Dick song could have been a wink to Richard Farina.  Had Been Down 
So Long been published by 1965?

Bad Ear / Bad Words / Sloppy mistakes. 

For this one, I'm gonna condense several of his observations: 
overwriting, bad ear (with respect to accents, but I'll extend it to 
dialog rhythms), careless use of words, ect.  This is where I'll get 
crucified:

p26:  "She gave it up presently, as if a cloud had approached the 
sun or the smog thickened, and so broken the "religious instant," 
whatever it might've been;"  Seems forced to me, but that's just my 
opinion.  

p44:  "...her discovery of what she was to label the Tristero System 
or often only The Tristero..."  Ref: Don's comment about show, don't 
tell.  She never refers to the Tristero System in the book, that I 
recall.  I think this kind of authorial commentary is what reminds 
some of the hard boiled dick stories, and it feels, to me, a bit 
like hack writing.

p43:  "'Come back,' said Metzger.  'Come on.'  /After awhile she 
said, 'I will'."  And she did.'  There's more dialog like this 
elsewhere in the story.

p12: "'Mucho, baby,' she cried, in an access of helplessness." Um, 
what's an access of helplessness?  Is this a misprint?  If so, what 
makes her cry even an excess of helplessness?

p60: "Metzger made a noncommittal moue."  There's that thesaurus. 
How many listers out there knew this one without looking it up?  
Even after you looked it up, how many thought "Gee, that's amazing, 
it's exactly the right word!"

p70:  "She could not say why, exactly but felt threatened by this 
absence of even the marginal try at communication latrines are known 
for."  Well, would Oedipa have used the word latrine, or even 
thought it?  Are latrine and bathroom really interchangeable?

Oedipa starts the story by reading book reviews in Scientific 
American, but seems pretty clueless about entropy, and needs a good 
deal of prompting on it later.  Why does she read SA?  If she does, 
why isn't she more familiar with entropy and Maxwell'sDemon? 

I could go on.  Now, I will admit that these are picky points, but I 
said Lot 49 feels clunky to me, and as I read back to see where, 
this is where that feeling emerges.  From his comments about Spanish 
flu (synchronicity:  I just read that they've found a preserved 
specimen of the flu in surviving tissue) and Tidewater accents and 
all I think Pynchon cares about the details at least as much as I 
do, although he could have been pulling my leg there.  In any case, 
although there are these kinds of nits in any book, it seems like 
there are a lot more of them per page in Lot 49 than in V or GR.  
This point will be hard to prove, so I'll leave it at that.

I think the other criticisms he makes in the Slow Learner intro can 
also be applied to Lot 49, but as this has dragged on quite long 
enough, I'll rest my case.  Go on, tear it up.  It'll make me feel 
better.

Brian McCary