SLSL Intro "The Way of Communication"

[Dave Monroe]

This I don't entirely disgree with.  I think perhaps
Pynchon positions himself--or, at any rate, the words
on the page perhaps position Pynchon--before the
divide, the fall, prelapsarian as you please. 
Perhaps.  Having gone from "unpolitical 50s student"
to, perhaps, implicitly, at any rate, politicized 60s,
er, professional? his consciousness is raised or
whatever I believe just prior to the emergence of the
"new" from the "old" left.  And I think he does
display misgivings about some of these latter
developments well before he makes them as explicit as
he makes anything here ...  

But, again, do note, "I don't think we were
consciously groping after any synthesis, though
perhaps we should have been," "we" here lacking any
particular anticedent save the first "we" ("We were
encouraged") in the paragraph, though I think, er, we
can agree that refers to something along the lines of,
writers following/under the influence of those "many
directions," e.g., Kerouac, "the diction of Saul
Bellow in ...," "emerging voices like ..." ...

But that sentence serves as the juncture, the switch, 
between the stylistic and the political here, no?  Er,
yes.  The following two sentences are nigh unto non
sequiturs unless one (e.g., me, you, whoever) reads
that that "perhaps we should have been" as looking
back on the "limited" "success of the 'new left,'" on
that "failure of college kids and blue-collar workers
to get together politically," as a result of "real,
invisible class force fields in the way of
communication between the two groups" whose "ways of
communication" are here positioned as analogous to
those "at least two very different kinds of English"
which aparently "we" failed even to "grop[e] after,"
much less achieve, "any synthesis" thereof.  Say ...

"two very distinct kinds of English":"college kids and
blue-collar workers"::"synthesis":"get together
politically"

Or ...

"two very distinct kinds of English" - "suynthesis" =
"two groups" + "real, invisible class force fields in
the way of communication"

Or somesuch.  Pynchon might not necessarily align
himself with "the 'new left,'" but he apparently
regrets its "limited" "success," perhaps its
"failure," even.  But, again, the interesting point
here is that implicit, nigh unto explicit, analogy
betwixt, say, poetic and political discourses,
"synthesis" = "get[ting] together" ...

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> Actually, when you read this paragraph (pp.6-7)
> carefully, there is not only a slide from the
> literary into the political, but also from
> self-identification ("we were ... we were") into
> detached observation ("the two groups"). In other
> words, there's a quite deliberate shift in the way
> Pynchon is positioning himself. He does characterise
> himself as a "writer", and as part of a "post-Beat"
> generation, but he stops short of identifying
> himself as a member of "the 'new left' later in the
> '60's", which is very interesting I think.
> 
> Having said that, of course there's an implicit
> affinity between the Beat/post-Beat mentality and
> left politics - and the segue about "consciously
> groping after a synthesis" does go in both
> directions - but the autobiographical admissions
> Pynchon makes are pretty guarded and carefully-
> worded on the whole.

Not uncharacteristic, of course.  Reminds me ...

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