SLSL Intro: poorly written?

[barbara100 at jps.net]

----- Original Message -----
From: "tyro tortoise" <tyrotortoise at yahoo.com>

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


I don't see it so confusing.  I mean, I don't know all the stories and
references he's making along the way, but even the way you sum it up, it's
pretty clear and flows pretty logically.

> 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.

Class angle, you said it there, end of the first sentence of said paragraph.

"What I find so interesting about the story now is not so much the
quaintness and puerility of attitude as the class angle." (SL, 6)

Then he goes on about peacetime service, and Lardass Levine, his apolitical
'50s, the language of Kerouac and Bellow, the hippie resurgence, and then
wraps it all back up with a statement about the "new left" and its
"invisible class force fields." It might be a little confusing getting up to
it, and he might ramble on a bit in-between (though that's charming in
itself), but  the last sentence of the second said paragraph ties the whole
class angle idea up neatly together if you ask me.

> "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)

It fits perfectly.  It ties back to what he finds so interesting about
Lowlands looking back on it through the years.






> 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
> (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. > conflict in the story is about
where to put his
> loyalties. Pynchon says he was an > 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 -- , 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.

> 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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