SLSL Intro "The Way of Communication"

[pynchonoid]

--- Peter Pinguid <peterpinguid at cluemail.com> wrote:

> If the intro tells us
> anything, it tells us that Pynchon's views change
> over time. He is not an
> easily pingeonholed, static entity.

His views about his early stories appear to have
changed somewhat.  I think we can safely presume he
thought them ready for publication at the time that
they were published. In 1984, in the SL Intro, he
finds flaws in them and frames them with the essay
that's the object of the current discussion. 

>For all we know, he could be looking back at
> the author of the
> intro to SL and thinking he was politically naive.

That's possible.  

> We have no way of knowing what the present day
> author thinks about such
> things. 

In the interview that Pynchon allowed Playboy Japan to
publish last December, about his thoughts on 9-11 --
an interview Pynchon has yet to repudiate, and which
has been defended as authentic by the editors of that
magazine -- he expressed sentiments that would seem to
be of a piece with the politics of the SL Intro,
including a continuing mistrust of the US political
and media establishment.  Based on thse statements,
Pynchon's politics don't seem to have changed much
since 1984; as he says in the SL Intro, he regrets
that the new left and blue-collar workers didn't
manage to break through the class barriers that
separated them and succeed with a revolution that
failed because of their inability to do so.  (I
understand that some P-listers don't believe the
Playboy Japan interview to be authentic;  I think they
are wrong to say so, and they've produced no
convincing evidence to support those arguments. I'm
not interested in arguing those points here any more.)


-Doug




=====
<http://www.pynchonoid.blogspot.com/>

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