is Pynchon a recluse?

[Otto]

Doug:
> I'm beginning to agree with former (?) P-lister John Mascaro who argued
that
> Pynchon is putting us on in the Slow Learner intro. Considering that
Pynchon
> seems to have understood very early on (in the early 60s, according to
> excerpts from the letters he wrote to his agent, Candida Donadio, reported
> in the NY Times at the time the letters were donated to the Morgan
Library,
> and before Pynchon closed off access to them) that his work would put him
in
> the company of the giants of American literature, it's difficult to draw
any
> firm conclusions from his ironic, nuanced -- and funny -- put-down of his
> early stories.  Critical reception to the stories was favorable and by the
> time Pynchon wrote the intro to the Slow Learner collection he knew that
> even his early work was held in high esteem by the literary establishment,
> so what he writes here has to be read, it seems to me, in light of our
> knowledge of his knowledge of the respected place this work has in the
> Western literary canon. Again, the authorial irony is deep and layered and
> nuanced.

In fact I never bought his negative self-criticism of "Lot 49" totally, I
always thought it was meant deeply ironical. But there are some points in
the SL-intro, where he really speaks about storywriting that are important
to me. For example about "Under the Rose" and "Entropy" - and in the middle
he's very ironic again ('as we say in the profession'):

"(...) let me point out that it is a lousy way to go about writing a story.
The problem here is like the problem with "Entropy": beginning with
something abstract - a thermodynamic coinage or the data in a guidebook -
and only then going on to try to develop plot and characters. This is
simply, as we say in the profession, ass backwards. Without some grounding
in human reality, you are apt to be left only with another apprentice
exercise, which is what this uncomfortably resembles." (17-18)

It goes without saying that I stopped all fiction-writing after reading
this, and having read John Barth of course...

"My reservations about science fiction are much the same as my reservations
about historical fiction (...). The more it is about science, the future,
other worlds, etc., the less it is likely to be about the proper subject of
literature: "human life, its happiness and its mysery."" (The Friday Book,
p. 218)

... and became a pomo-addict.

Otto