SLSL Intro "It Is Simply Wrong"

[Dave Monroe]

   "Disagreeable as I find 'Low-lands' now, it's
nothingh compared to my bleakness of heart when I have
to look at 'Entropy.'  The story is a fine example of
a procedural error beginning writers are always being
cautioned against.  It is simply wrong to begin with a
theme, symbol or other abstract unifying agent, and
then try to force characters and events to conform to
it." (SL, "Intro," p. 12)

>From Steven Weisenburger, "Thomas Pynchon at
Twenty-Two: A Recovered Autobiographical Sketch,"
American Literature, Vol. 62, No. 4 (1990) ...

"... the Cornell seminars taught him the way of
crafting a fiction around one central metaphor that
unifies its sometimes very disparate and complex
elements of character, imagery, and action." 

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/bio/influences.html

>From Jules Siegel, Christine Wexler, et al., Lineland:
Mortality and Mercy on the Internet's
Pynchon-L at Waste.Org Discussion List (Philadelphia:
Intangible Assets Manufacturing, 1997) ...

Christine Wexler

"He's trying to do in his books what Warren Beatty did
in the film 'Dick Tracy.'  The characters in his books
are all cartoon characters.  He writes in farmes just
like a comic strip.  He's writing cartoons instead of
drawing them.  They're not two dimensional but
holograms.  They're real people who go in and out of
being cartoons.  They gfo back and forth between the
real world and the cartoon world." (p. 54)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9610&msg=7135&sort=date

Jules Siegel

"It is a mistake in examining the work of any artist
to insist on revealing some grand architectural
structure.  You can do this with Escher, because he
did work that way....  Tom is not that kind of artist
....  Thus, I think that it is sometimes better to
just let him be himseff, without picking away to the
under-painting of his tableaux, because his sources
are often disappointingly thin.  This is not always a
result of lack of diligence.  The sources themselves
are surprisingly shallow when you examine them closely
with a skeptical eye ....
   "There is a tendency among scholars to mix this
stuff into a confusing stew of names and places and
cabalistic numerology and all that Talmudic and
satanic folderol that passes for erudition...." (pp.
101-2)

   "A lot of times, I think, he is talking in
tongues." (p. 103)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9610&msg=7404&sort=date

"He requires elucidation because his interests are so
varied, ranging from lowdown jokes to highbrow
science.  This elucidation has become even more
important as his sources have become clouded by time."
(p. 113)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9610&msg=7308&sort=date

Okay, these weren't QUITE the quotes I was looking
for, or, at any rate, I still haven't recovered the
one I really wanted.  Thought it was from either
Siegel or, more likely, Wexler, about various schema
underlying various episodes in Those Pynchonian Texts.
 Mentioned the periodic table, for example, albeit not
necessarily as an actual one.  Worn out from hunting. 
Any help would be appreciated ...

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