COL49: The beginning is the beginning is the end

[Doug Millison]

Thanks for getting this COL49 project underway.

What it means to say that work of art is "flawed" might be interesting to
explore. But, in the case at hand I wonder if we should in fact begin by
assuming that Pynchon finds COL49 "flawed" and if Pynchon has made such a
statement, what can we assume he means by making it?

Is there a quote from Pynchon where he says COL49 is flawed?  I don't have
the Slow Learner intro before me here, where I know he says something about
having gotten things right with The Secret Integration than going back to
another way with COL49 -- I don't have that quote here, but that's the sense
of it that I recall right now, and I expect somebody might correct me if I
don't have it right.  Does that statement in the Slow Learner intro really
add up to "a book that its very own author considers flawed"? 

I expect Pynchon, along with many other authors, would be the first to admit
that their finished works fall short of the way they were originally
conceived in one or another way.  It would be very interesting to read what
Pynchon might write if he were to go back and assess COL49 the way he has
his short stories in the intro to Slow Learner where he addresses specific
shortcomings of those stories. As he writes that intro, he must be aware of
the reception -- almost overwhelmingly favorable -- that has greeted COL49.
I like the notion -- first advanced in this forum, to my knowledge, by
Pynchon scholar John Mascaro -- that Pynchon may to a certain degree be
putting us on in his Slow Learner intro.  As always with Pynchon, the
autorial irony is layered, multidimensional, making any simple and
straightforward interpretation problematic.