Familiarity Breeds Kute Korrespondences

[oscar williams]

Subject: Familiarity Breeds Kute Korrespondences 

  "Here's a cute coincidence," observed Hugh.

          --Transparent Things by Nabokov, p.73

What a coincidence! I was just thinking of
corresponding about an acute coincidence here.
Yesterday was All Soul's day. I did my Catholic duty
and lit a candle for the souls trapped in purgatory on
the unmoderated Pynchon List. Coincidental or not,
there is general agreement, and harmony, if not
conformity in the correspondences here today.  Perhaps
my little prayer has lifted a few souls out of limbo
and allowed them to take flight and slip past St.
Murthy and the Oxangel without being recognized. If
that be true, I cannot help but conclude, although I
know one should not rationalize a mystery of faith,
that the liberation of these souls was part of
someone's plan. God only knows for sure.  

An arranged coincidence of cute correspondences. 

Not quite a conspiracy, but it is obvious that all
this talk of narrators, personas, characters... and of
ironic deprecation, fiction and fantasy... is a bit
absurd. The Introduction to SL is nothing at all like
the Preface (really a Prologue) to Don Quixote. I
doubt even Borges would attempt such a foolish thing
as that. This absurd comparison reminds us that God
didn't make little green apples so that Adam would
name them oranges. However, if one insists on the
absurdity one can insist on the fallacious analogy
too. Push it too far and one can even imagine that the
narrator of SL is really the step -father of 86.
Surely, that is the only explanation for his not
insisting that we pardon or ignore the faults in his
child. That and his being in prison. Push a little
more and one can imagine that as an evil and ironic
step-father he cannot stop himself from kicking poor
86 after he drags him in front of a classroom full of
aspiring writers and doubtful readers. Oh well, so
much for that. Kute, huh? And Thomas R. Pynchon,
author of Slow Learners and a few novels is not
Charles Kinbote or John Ray, Jr., Ph.D. Nor has he
written a Preface anything like Conrad's Preface to
NN. That Preface is a good one for writers and readers
alike because it talks about good writing and not bad
writing. What use is Pynchon's bad writing and his
apology? Oh, be kind. Kindness to Authors indeed. Both
Conrad, Nabokov and James Wood talk about details. We
have not gotten into the details of the SL tales and
I'm not sure I want to. For if reading be rereading
one should not waste precious time reading what one
knows, from the horses mouth no less,  is not good
writing. And he's right. And he's being honest. Every
criticism he provides is obvious enough to a minor
reader. And "nothing is more boring or more unfair to
the author than starting to read, with...preconceived
notion[s]"  says Nabokov. Of course Nabokov would not
know how boring and unfair it is to the reader,
starting to read, say, SL, with the preconceived
notion, provided by the author himself, that the
stories are bad ones. 

I know, I'm the Slime oooozing out of your Pynchonset,
but I got wings. 

I got wings 
you got wings
all dem purgatorial Pynheads gots wings

when I gets to heaven
it's gonna be unmoderated 
and I'm gonna oooz all ova dat heaven 










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