SLSL Intro A Couple-Three Bonzos

[MalignD at aol.com]

Responding to Charles Albert:

It's difficult to respond to you point by point because my argument isn't 
that Pynchon isn't being ironic or obscurant; rather, that there's no 
evidence or, in my reading, any real hint that that's his tone or that a wise 
reader will need run the essay through a converter in order to find the 
"real" meaning of what he's writing.  And, I'm afraid I can't put Occam aside 
without misleading you as to the way I think.  

A couple of things.  I think the Pynchon/Nabokov comparison can be pushed too 
far.  These are, finally, very different writers from different generations.  
Nabokov is a displaced white Russian, very European in his sensibilities, 
Pynchon nothing of the sort.  And there are great differences between the 
often convoluted, but highly controlled fictions of Nabokov and the far more 
loose and rambling works of Pynchon.  Nabokov was a middle-aged immigrant to 
America who had, prior to that time, been writing in Russian; Pynchon, well, 
not that.  I of course think there are similarities as well and I find it 
reasonable to think that Nabokov influenced Pynchon if only because they were 
both at Cornell, Pynchon an aspiring writer,  Nabokov by that time the author 
of Lolita.  But I think one can only point to instances of influence and 
similarity where one finds them--note the individual case--and that it's 
reckless to extrapolate broader similarities and influences from them with no 
more basis.

<<Occam would suggest that he is speaking "generationally" - which seems out 
of character for someone who seems so intent on distancing himself from any 
such "crowd" >>

Not sure about Occam, but I don't find it out of character.  I think of 
Pynchon as part of a generation, or a group within a generation, a 
particularly interesting one that includes Geoff Muldaur, Bob Dylan, Ken 
Kesey, Robert Stone--one separated from the hippies that followed in some 
large part by their intellectualism, even their attendance at college.  Even 
Dylan did some time at college.  Their sensibility was rooted in cultural 
history and was interested, even reverent, toward forebears--Woody Guthrie, 
Robert Johnson, the Beats, etc.  Rebellion was directed and polemical, as 
opposed to what came later, where rebellion was in large part unintellectual, 
mocking and dismissive.  I think Pynchon in his few essays, but also in his 
fiction, has tended to show himself as a "we,"--the hipster references, 
Charlie Parker, Malcolm X, Wittgenstein, the whole intellectual hipster 
catalog --as part of the generational group I'm talking about.

<<Does he have nothing good to say about a set of stories that at the very 
least can be described as REMARKABLY PRECOCIOUS?>>

Don't rate them so.  Read Dubliners, see what Joyce was up to at the same 
age.  

<<"It may yet turn out that racial differences are not as basic as questions 
of money and power, but have served those who deplore them most, in keeping 
us divided and so relatively poor and powerless.">>

I too found this the most interesting sentence in the Intro and spent some 
time thinking about what was being said.  I think it can be read two ways 
but, as they are mutually exclusive, only one way or the other.  "... served 
those who deplore them most ..." can be read as meaning "serve the interests 
of those who deplore them most" which seems to me a deeply cynical statement 
and, by that, wildly provocative.  It can also be read to mean "serves to 
keep divided those who deplore them most"; i.e., works against the interests 
of those who deplore them.  I think the latter is what is intended, if only 
because the first reading would certainly call for some elaboration on P's 
part.  How would those who deplore it be served?  By providing them careers 
and reputations heroically working in the movement?  Or ... what?   

If the latter, it makes more ready sense, saying simply that black and white 
poor are more joined in their shared poverty (and lack of power) than they 
are separated by their racial differences.  

I'm sorry this is so scattershot and not more comprehensive.

Best,

malignd