SLSL It's raining Frogs & Mirrors

[Paul Mackin]

On Wed, 2002-12-11 at 18:57, Elainemmbell at aol.com wrote:
> Struggling with the--to me--unreadable "Under The Rose" I am forced to wonder 
> if it is all an elaborate and intentional intellectual mind game.


I think I found the story hard to follow. At my time of reading it, the
reworking of the material in V. was for me a fairly dim memory. The good
thing about including "Under the Rose" in the collection is that it
provides an ex post facto foretaste of Pynchon's use in his mature work
of relatively obscure historical, geographical and other interesting 
information. Pynchon seems to be critical in "Introduction" of the use
of a Baedeker as a source of material. This is one of a number of
reasons many of us are slightly perplexed with "Introduction." . I think
his readers should be thankful he never reformed the practice of
Baedekerizing, although the "Baedeker" he employs later on is a vastly
expanded and improved one. 

P.