SLSL Intro: "if...I were...him"

[MalignD at aol.com]

MutualCode:

<<He wouldn't be the same after the meeting would he, and the future would be 
changed, which is probably impossible. But the Intro narrator has nearly 
succeeded in doing something similar with good old fashioned word play. That 
is, he has suggested that  the person who wrote these stories is, or was, 
someone else, who can be referred to in the third person. It is that device, 
I think, which reflects back on the narrator, and serves to underscore the 
sense that this may be a "persona." >>

Daedelus:

<<I agree that the self-criticisms may be apt, but that's not to discount the 
possibility of Pynchon's wrapping those self-criticisms in the shroud of a 
persona, a seemingly self-effacing and near-apologetic "voice" that helps to 
convey a certain tone. >>

To say that TRP is creating "persona" is, I think, overstating what is going 
on here, making it more interesting and mysterious than it is.  He's chosen a 
particular tone for the essay over another or others, no more than you would 
do in choosing one tone in writing to your alumni magazine, another in 
writing condolences to the perhaps bereaved widow of an on-line journalist.  
Read Henry James's introductions for another approach and tone, one Pynchon, 
wisely, chose not to emulate.  

MutualCode (again):

<<It's only lately that it occurred to me one reason the Intro is hard to 
swallow is that maybe it's just Pynchon being open,  and, well, sincere. >>

I'm sorry; I thought he was employing a persona.

Millison:

<<Being able to look back with clarity and get a bigger-picture grasp of the 
way one's life has progressed, as I see that operating in others, especially 
men and women much older than myself -- that's one of the gifts of growing 
older, imo. Coming to terms and being able to accept the person one was at a 
younger age, no easy task. I'd say the picture that Pynchon paints here of 
himself at 47 is that of a wise man, as well as the Pynchonian wise guy so 
many readers love.>>

True enough, but again, making a lot more of this than seems merited.  L
ooking back--with curiosity, with dismay--at the person I used to be is 
something I've been doing since my teens.  It would be a brain-dead human 
being who didn't, I think.  

David Morris:

<<Yes, I agree that this is yet more of his SL apology, not necesarily a  
sincere one.  To me it seems to be a slippery manuever, not meant (too much)  
to be taken literally. >> 

Don't quite get what you're saying here.  What is yet more of his SL apology, 
what a slippery manuever?