SLSL Intro "It is only fair to warn ..."

[Monte Davis]

"It is only fair to warn even the most kindly disposed of readers that
there are some mighty tiresome passages here, juvenile and delinquent
too. At the same time, my best hope is that, pretentious, goofy and
ill-considered as they get now and then, these stories will still be of
use with all their flaws intact..."

This always leads me to GR p. 660, one of the sweetest passages anywhere in
Pynchon, where Enzian says:

"The Blicero I loved was a very young man, in love with empire, poetry, his
own arrogance. Those all must have been important to me once. What I am now
grew from that. A former self is a fool, an insufferable ass, but he's still
human, you'd no more turn him out than you'd turn out any other kind of
cripple, would you?"