beatin them bozos......

[calbert at hslboxmaster.com]

To:MalignD at aol.com
CC:pynchon-l at waste.org
BCC:
Subject:Re: SLSL Intro A Couple-Three Bonzos

MalignD:


"And, I'm afraid I can't put Occam aside 
without misleading you as to the way I think."

He's always served you well.......When I apply him, I come down wondering
why Pynchon would break a pattern established and maintained before and
after the piece in question. "On Writing" and "On Writers" seem pretty
popular forms with writers of all ranks; Oakley Hall, Jonathan Lethem are
but two disparate examples of the herd. But this is the extent of it from a
writer whose audience must be nearly as large, but whose relative
importance differs by at least an order of magnitude?

"A couple of things.  I think the Pynchon/Nabokov comparison can be pushed
too 
far.  These are, finally, very different writers from different
generations."

Yes.......and no......
  
"Nabokov is a displaced white Russian, very European in his sensibilities, 
Pynchon nothing of the sort."

Clearly. I can only tell you that my response to each as a reader is eerily
similar. 

" 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."

I must defer to the depth of your experience with the former, and limit my
comments to the few hundred pages I've taken in. But I find in each that
the "game" aspect of the respective fictions enjoy a primacy not exactly
universal in the metier ( by which I do not mean to suggest that that is
without provenance).

" 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."

Nabokov's use of the medium, english, is on a level of obsession that I
have only otherwise encountered in Pynchon, again, not without prominent
anteceedents - but someone will have to point out those who did so with
such precision since Joyce. Conrad offers an analogue to Nabokov, but not
even he would toss out "tesselated" and "granoblastically" within the first
dozen lines. This precision extends to syntactic "style", though N seems
less prone to endlessly nested clauses. I concurr that Nabokov's fictions
are more "disciplined", but bet that Pynchon would love to be able to
emulate Nabokov here as well. There is also, about the prose of each, a
poetic quality that I simply have not encountered anywhere else. I would
answer a question regarding Pynchon's "tradition" with much greater
confidence now.

" 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."

yes......if I gave the impression that I relied entirely on this analogy to
support my "interpretation" of the intro to SL, it was clumsy.  


"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--...."

I simply don't know enough of this context to comment - I'm likely
exaggerating his status as generational "loner"......He is also unlikely to
share my view of his contributions to his art as "singular" and
"remarkable" to a degree sufficient to seperate him from the likes of Kesey
and Dylan. 

"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."

Again, I take these primarily for their "contextual" value. With respect to
his non - fiction I do find the use of "we" at least worthy of
"consideration".

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

Sure, and by now Rimbaud had quit forging metaphors to work on his short
game, but precocious is surely a "relative" quality.

<<"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."

So?

"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."

C'mon..............whence that keenly honed rigor?

 " How would those who deplore it be served?  By providing them careers 
and reputations heroically working in the movement? "

Why not? Can't these be "platforms" for the excersize of of power?

"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 can only hope, and pray, not.........banal isn't in him....   

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


....and yet yours is always the last reply I have the courage to open....go
figger....


love,
cfa


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