Re. Lot 49 & JFK

[rj]

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Terrance: 
> Is Lot 49 Pynchon's encrypted meditation on the assassination of President John
> Fitzgerald Kennedy?  Hollander makes a very convincing argument. Comments?
> 

Hollander is indeed a well-received and respected Pynchon critic, though
I am not familiar with the article you mention or the connections he
traces in it between _Lot49_ and the assassination of JFK. It seems to
me to be way too subtle if that was in fact Pynchon's intention with the
novel -- it doesn't really work because the reader doesn't 'get' it. Put
it up beside DeLillo's _Libra_, say, (or Richard Condon's _Winter
Kills_, which just came up on the DeLillo list) and it becomes a pretty
pale meditation -- but I'm willing to be convinced I guess. 

It's Dillinger's assassination which is the one Pynchon returns to most
often I think, and it's one of the few places in his fiction where the
author's personal sympathies are rendered most plainly.

Also, I suspect that _Lot 49_ may have been well under way (or, at
least, projected) by the time of JFK's death. While we're on this, I've
always been interested to know about the two "excerpts" from _Lot 49_
which appeared as short stories:
'The World (This One), the Flesh (Mrs Oedipa Maas), and the Testament of
Pierce Inverarity'. Esquire 44.6 (December 1965).
'The Shrink Flips'. Cavalier 16.153 (March 1966).
Has anybody ever read these? The first title seems to lend weight to
some of the religious interpretations applied to the novel: 49 days of
Pentecost etc. Are the stories exactly the same as they appear in the
novel? I think I read somewhere once that they were "excerpts" or
"portions" and so assumed this to be pretty much the case, with slight
emendation if any. If so, it begs another question: Why would Pynchon
allow these two 'stories' to be published at all? He hasn't done
anything like it since, and hadn't before. ('Under the Rose' was
substantially recast before it was incorporated into _V._; in fact, the
emulation and refocussing of the short story was part of the point in
itself with the V. chapter.) Did he need the money? (But I don't imagine
he would have received much at all from either of those magazines.) Was
he 'trying out' the material? Courting bids from competing publishers?
Or, had he decided to abandon _Lot 49_ altogether? (Remember what he
says about it in the Slow Learner intro? If not disowning it outright,
it still pains him to claim it as his own nearly two decades later.) I'm
thinking maybe Pynchon considered abandoning this second book, which was
only "marketed as a novel", around 1965-1966, but then relented. (Due,
perhaps, to financial considerations?)

best