V.V. (14) McLintic's "bad week" at the V-Note

[jbor]

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>From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
>

> I agree with all you say here, but I'm not sure it's his own
> college background here at all or that his own college
> background is Slothrop's. Maybe what he might have been if
> his family fortune hadn't been lost, he hadn't been raised a
> catlick and all, met Farina, worked on the road crew, went
> out on a float, smoked a little grass, lived in the
> villiage...and so on. The old northern liberal routine is
> more Harvard boy than long island kid in Elmira land.

I'm not sure that Pynchon was raised as a Catholic (Oyster Bay High?) And
Glen Cove is pretty posh, isn't it? The family certainly wasn't poor, as you
seem to imply. But the parallels with the 'Introduction' to _SL_ where
Pynchon talks about being an "unpolitical '50's student" (p. 6, and cf.
Oedipa's college daze here as well) and his own "glancing acquaintance with
the Beat movement" and jazz clubs (p.8), are unmistakeable.

Interestingly, it's in the 'Intro' also that Pynchon mentions the rise of
the "Chicago School" of literary critics as something of a watershed event
for him and his peers, and where he sets up the oppositions of "traditional
vs. Beat fiction" (p.6) and later, "this new writing" (i.e. his as well) and
"the more established modernist tradition we were being exposed to then in
college."(p.8)

best