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

[MalignD at aol.com]

slothenvyetc.

<<Plenty of writers, from Hawthorne in "The Custom House" to Nabokov's John 
Ray, Jr., have employed a persona that makes the prefatory material as much a 
part of the fiction as the fiction it prefaces. >>

You do know, don't you, that Nabokov created John Ray, Jr.?  That he's, you 
know, not real?

<<Nothing persuasive? The entire intro is an attempt on the author's part to 
get the reader to feel a certain way ... he tries to manipulate our attitudes 
of his writing techniques, and in turn our perceptions of him as a writer.>>

Or perhaps he straightforwardly and accurately describes what follows. 

<<And since the facts are limited to what P has given us on the page, it's 
quite unreasonable to assume that you know enough of what he intended to 
convey to judge when a reader is "overreaching" ... >>

Let me try this again.  It's not whether I know enough; it's making a 
reasonable assessment based on the available facts.  If you find this persona 
idea persuasive and believe Pynchon is using this persona to make unreliable 
statements about what follows, well good for you.  Believe that.  But save 
yourself this effort you're making here;  you're not persuading me.