SLSL Intro: poorly written?

[tyro tortoise]

--- barbara100 at jps.net wrote:
> 
> ----- 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.

He's talking about "The Small Rain." It's his first
published story. 

Pynchon, Thomas.  "The Small Rain,"  Cornell Writer,
Vol. 6, No. 2 (March 1959): 14-32.

He's talking about the 1950s.
All of the stories and references along the way are
from the 1950s.  

The sentence about the "new left" and the 1960s sticks
out. That's one of the reasons we've been discussing
this sentence for a few days. We've come to no
agreement about its meaning. First of all, it's a
vague sentence. What the hell are invisible class
force fields? Up to this point Pynchon has avoided
these kinds of vague metaphors. Second,  after talking
about the 1950s for nine paragraphs, he skips into the
1960s with a vague metaphor.  

 
> > 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)

Obviously the class angle and communication is what
the entire discussion hangs on. But it is all hanging
in the 1950s. 


> 
> 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.




>From the beginning of the essay he is talking about
the 1950s. He begins with the story he published in
1959. 
He talks about what was going on in the 1950s. The
sentence on the "new left" (page 7) and the 1960s is
the first sentence to mention the '60s ("later in the
'60s..."). On page 8 he talks a bout a preview to the
dropout of the '60s. The hippie resurgence? That's on
page 9. Note that he's talking about nostalgia and
vindication for the Beats.  
> 
> It fits perfectly.  It ties back to what he finds so
> interesting about
> Lowlands looking back on it through the years.

OK, thanks. 

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