(Fwd) Re: SLSL Intro "A Couple-Three Bonzos"

[MalignD at aol.com]

<<With some surgical excisions I offer this response to a MalignD query ...>>

Responding to Charles:

My short answer is that your argument has more to say about Nabokov and 
Lermontov (who sounds a little like a less playful Philip Roth) than about 
Pynchon.

<<I may be ignorant of it, but I cannot recall another instance where Pynchon 
offers "himself" in such a manner. If he has spent his career "hiding" from 
those who might use biographical information to inform their "deconstructive" 
efforts, why would he do so on this occasion? >>

One might as easily use that as a reason to be forthcoming:  with time, he 
has grown less apprehensive, more comfortable with opening up, was eager to 
grab the opportunity.  One can argue one as easily as the other.  But, taking 
your point, why say anything then?  Why write an Introduction?  And, having 
decided to do so, what gain in privacy making misleading statements?  How is 
his privacy  protected?  Misleading statements, furthermore, that his readers 
can't know are misleading.  A rather mean-spirited bit of business, no?

As I mentioned to you offlist, I find comparisons to Nabokov's fictional 
characters--John Ray, Charles Kinbote--not apt.  There's an entire book of 
Nabokov's opinions on his own writing and other things (Strong Opinions), 
which is far more analogous to TP's Intro than are Nabokov's fictional 
characters, devices, and strategies, not that I think necessarily that what 
is true in one case is true in the other (I'm not saying Strong Opinions is 
TP's model, or a strictly parallel case, in other words).