SLSL Intro, Class/Race- "8 Mile"

[tyro tortoise]

--- Mutualcode at aol.com wrote:
> 
> They may borrow Carl, but B.A.R.rington is given.
> Enough> for now. The poiint is, that there is a a
conflation> between
> Class and Race from the beginning- I mean the Intro.
> The > author, he who is being educated, the implied
slow> learner-
> as opposed to the real students "us"- is learning to
> become> a prophet and a healer, as it were- an
artist-> growing wings.
> 
> It is too early to argue my point about TSI. Let's
> cap it for now.

Consider it capped. Are race and class conflated from
the beginning of the essay? I don't see that. 


> 
> As for the disingenuous Intro narrator- clearly he
> is posing; the question is why, or with what intent,
and that makes all the difference, as has already been
pointed to: Why should "he" deliberately deceive? 

I don't think he is posing. 
I don't think he is deliberately deceptive. 
I think the he's being candid. 

All of which, I think, misses
> the more obvious and straightforward question: Is it
possible for Pynchon not to pose, given the fact that
"he" is talking about himself; or, at least, himself
as he once may have been?

Why not? 

> Somehow the 
> issue of posing got turned, and became one of
> disingenuousness,  in the "harder" earlier
connotation of the word, as opposed to more 
> current trends, which have moved towards
> "faux-naïf;" i.e., a  certain playfulness,
encouraging, perhaps, a willing suspension 
> of disbelief- or, so I'm led to believe by the
> American Heritage Dictionary.

Why not take him at his word? As a young man  he
suffered from innocent simplicity. Not to mention
ignorance and arrogance. 

 
> If that more accepting or inclusive aspect of the
> disingenuous narrator is permitted, than the posing
becomes less sinister and the Orwellian overtones more
philosophical- Is it possible to re-construct the past
given the present? 

There is nothing sinister about honestly looking back
on youthful ignorance, innocense, and arrogance. 

What Orwellian ovetones? 



>From a
> mathematical
> perspective that's called finding the area under the
> curve, or, 
> integration, and works fine, in the ideal world of
> mathematics.
> But how do we deal with the messy real world and the
> foibles of 
> memory? Henry Adams might be more apt here than
> Nabokov,
> but I'm learning about Nabokov, too.
> 
> For those insistent on both a disingenuous and
> deliberately deceitful
> narrator, e.g., conspiracy enthusiasts, the
> "transition point" between
> the beats and the hippies- i.e., the exact point
> where the rate of change,
> or derivative, is at a maximum (the second order
> derivative is zeroed out)
> known as an inflection point- where the curve
> switches from being 
> concave up to concave down- would be about five feet
> off the ground 
> in Dallas, on November 22, 1963, at ? AM. As for
> those three bonzos- 
> triangulate as you will. 
> 
> respecfully
> 


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