SLSL Intro: poorly written?

[tyro tortoise]

--- Tim Strzechowski <dedalus204 at attbi.com> wrote:
> 
> I guess I'd need to see exactly where you find
> Pynchon "confusing the
> reader" to better address the questions you raise
> and figure out if it's the
> readers fault for said confusion.

I've already mentioned the sentence that begins page
12 ("It may yet...). 

I think we got stuck on this sentence because its
confusing and it doesn't belong to the paragraph. 

Example 2

"The success of the 'New Left' later in the '60's was
to be limited by the failure of the college kids and
blue-collar workers to get together politically. One
reason was the presence of real, invisible class force
fields in the way of communication between the two
groups." SL Introduction 7.10-15



Why are we stuck on this passage? 
It's an interesting passage. The debate about it here
has been interesting too. But, like the passage about
race and power, it doesn't quite fit in this
paragraph. It's also an example of poor writing. 

What is this comment about the "new left" doing in
this paragraph? It's confusing. 

Pynchon has been talking about Lowlands. Reflecting on
the story as an older man, with clarity and
middle-aged tranquility, 
he is attracted to the class angle. He says that
peacetime service (Pynchon served in the Navy during
peacetime) can provide an "excellent introduction to
the structure of society at large." In the Navy
Pynchon discovers that the older, college educated,
Brass are often idiots and that the working-class
white hats, while in theory capable of idiocy, are
much more apt to display competence. Lardass  Levine's
conflict in the story is about where to put his
loyalties. Pynchon says he was an "unpolitical"
student in the 1950s and was not aware of this at the
time, but reflecting on the story now (on the
interesting class struggle in the story) he says that
it was dilemma that most writers of the time were
dealing with. 
He goes on to talk about this dilemma at its simplest
level - language. He says writers were encouraged from
many directions -- Keruac, Beats, Roth, Bellow, and
Gold. These writers expanded the possibilities. Next,
he says that the writers in his generation did not
grope after synthesis. He thinks that perhaps they
should have. 
The next sentence is the one that has caused us so
much trouble. 
Why is this sentence in this paragraph? Pynchon
suddenly skips into a vague invisible class force
field in the way of communication and the 1960s. 

"The success of the 'New Left' later in the '60's was
to be limited by the failure of the college kids and
blue-collar workers to get together politically. One
reason was the presence of real, invisible class force
fields in the way of communication between the two
groups." SL Introduction 7.10-15

We can try to connect this statement back to the story
Pynchon is talking about, to issues of class, to the
Navy as microcosm of the structure of society at
large, to possibility of language synthesis in
late1950s literature but it doesn't quite connect. It
doesn't fit in this paragraph. 





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