the slow learner intro

[kevin at limits.org]

On Wed, 1 Aug 2001, pynchon-l-digest wrote:
> From: Doug Millison <DMillison at ftmg.net>
> Subject: RE: Re:  RE: COL49: The beginning is the beginning is the end
> 
> calbert
> [...]that crack 
> about having forgotten everything that he had learned to date 
> seems hyperbolical.....
> 
> ...unless the reader might choose to agree with somebody like P's college
> pal when he claims that Pynchon admitted he was so "out of it" (or whatever
> JS claims Pynchon said when the two of them were alone in P's Manhattan
> Beach apartment in the mid-60s, nobody else present of course, and JS asked
> P about the GR manuscript he saw there) he didn't know what he was writing
> - -- claims that JS has since amplified to minimize claims that Pynchon has
> the talent that readers around the world credit him for having (JS also
> gives us Chrissie quotes to the effect that JS is the better writer, P just
> a pretender, or some such).  Take enough drugs and a person, even a skilled
> artist, just might forget everything she knew, I suppose, or not recall what
> she wrote, and the resulting masterpiece is just that New Testatment that
> you finally get with a million monkeys banging on typewriters, I
> suppose....

I haven't read the article for a while, but I believe Siegel says that TRP
was "out of it" while writing the original draft of _GR_, and that TRP was
disapointed in _Lot 49_ because he had rushed it in order to get the
money.  Both novels are extremely carefully crafted -- _Lot 49_ is
Nabokovian in clarity -- and we can only assume that TRP re-wrote both
mss. several times.