SLSL Intro, incl., "As Nearly as I Can Remember"

[Paolo Cavallo]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <MalignD at aol.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, November 02, 2002 6:06 PM
Subject: Re: SLSL Intro, incl., "As Nearly as I Can Remember"


> As I argued then, if Pynchon is being ironic, i.e., if his humility about the 
> quality of the work is intentionally unreliable, a feigned pose, to what end? 
..
> 
> This is not the case in Pynchon's Introduction.  There is no clear 
> metafictional game-playing, no real reason for a reader to assume an ironic 
> point of view...  
> 
> ... a 
> brief comment about the stories themselves, which is that they are not of 
> very high quality... 
> ... the Slow Learner stories seem wholly deserving of Pynchon's 
> modesty.  Indeed, they are in many ways inferior to the first collections of 
> a number of talented minor writers. 
> 
> I think, then, it is far more likely that Pynchon is evaluating candidly.

I find these remarks quite convincing.
In a message sent by mistake to one p-lister only, I wrote,
somehow to the same intent:

>Here we can think of Proust. He was aware that the man
>that was writing A la Recherche and the persona that
>appeared to say "I" in his autobiographical narrative
>were two different thing. In an important passage (that
>I would recall gladly, but I can't) he emphasize that
>they do not even share the same name, Marcel.
>
>Having said that, I must also say that I think Pynchon
>is absolutely honest here about his own work. Pynchon's
>fiction is full of signs of ambiguity. Here I can find
>none. I don't feel that Pynchon is telling me something
>different from his personal provisional truth.

Paolo