Pynchon's Interview

[Terrance]

Monica Belevan wrote:
> 
> It´s still exceptional. If he isn´t being secretly taxed for it yet, he shall be paying for it in sundry lifelong installments in the future. That´s where the tragedy sits.
> 
> Look at Terrance: no, sir, too much. Look at Otto´s professor: reduced to too little. Look at you in 30 years: you might be lecturing on...Steinbeck.
> And so may I.
> 
> Youth has an end.
> Love me, love my umbrella.

All things must pass. 

I would read the Slow Learner stories with a class if I thought they
were any good. 
I think "The Secret Integration" is worth teaching. Add to it that Watts
essay, the Luddite essay, maybe a chapter or three from V., maybe
Autobiography of Malcolm X, and a bits from GR  some history of African
American Labor.   I think students can and ahve been reading CL49 for a
long time. I don't happen to like it. I think V. is loads of fun and
worth teaching.  GR may be read by the right group, but I don't think I
have the right group.  That goes for M&D. But I think VL is a very cool
novel and I think my students could read it and like it.   Its a great
book. These days, I'm very interested in union labor in Pynchon's
fiction, but also the 1960s. 


If you have the group to teach a Pynchon course and run the table, why
not? 

"There is no such thing as educational value in the abstract." 

		--Dewey, Experience & Education