is Pynchon a recluse?

[jbor]

----------
>From: CyrusGeo at netscape.net
>
>
>> How interesting are the reflections and
>> interpretations of old men looking back on their
>> youthful productions.
>
> Yes, they are, but do they alter your perception of a work you have already
> read? Or should they?

The _Slow Learner_ 'Introduction' seems to speak to this debate, the opening
paragraph in particular. Of the early stories Pynchon writes:

    My first reaction, rereading these stories, was *oh my God*, accompanied
    by physical symptoms we shouldn't dwell upon.

And, in fact, he really doesn't so much attempt or pretend to interpret each
story as contextualise its creation for the reader, with a few
self-denigrating asides thrown in for good measure:

    ... my best hope is that, goofy and ill-considered as they get now and
    then, these stories will still be of use with their flaws intact, as
    illustrative of typical problems in entry-level fiction, and cautionary
    about some practices which younger writers might prefer to avoid. (p. 4)

It seems to me that the first quote above (and what follows it) describe the
moment when Pynchon, coming back to the early stories as a *reader*,
suddenly had to face up to the fact that he was also their writer. In the
time between when he wrote the words on the page and the time he read them
again it wasn't the text which had changed, but Pynchon himself. As a reader
*his* mind interacted first with the text, and then it did (as it might for
another reader) project an image of the person who created that text. Of
course, there is an implicit reservation that any such projection is going
to be a subjective one ("I now pretend to have reached a level of clarity
about the writer I was back then ... "), which moves the whole venture into
the realms of psychoanalysis as you say.

The same sort of thing is happening in the chapter in _V._ when Fausto looks
back on his journals and poems I think.

What's at stake here for some, no doubt, is "the One, True Interpretation of
The Text". That's a fallacy or fiction, of course -- one which Pynchon
exposes as such time and time again in his novels -- and it's a fallacy
which is deeply rooted in ideology. Sadly, it's often the case that only
with knives and invective are the proponents of such a fallacy able to posit
their retorts.

best