COL49: The beginning is the beginning is the end

[MalignD at aol.com]

<<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.  >>

Faulkner famously said that all works fall short of conception (although I'm 
betting Nabokov never said such a thing, at least about his own work).

<<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.>>

This is the second time at least you've made this point and it seems you're 
not following it through.  

If Pynchon is being ironic with his sneaker-scuffing self-deprecation, that 
would suggest that his real opinion is that these stories (which, in fact, 
aren't all that hot) are of such a high standard that to put them down in 
that way is an irony the reader will get and enjoy--a fairly repulsive bit of 
egotism--or that the reader will not get the irony, which would be pointless 
and perverse.

Far more likely, it seems to me, that he finds these mostly mediocre stories 
mediocre.