SLSL Intro "Two Amiable Fuzzy Creatures"

[Wasted Words]

--- David Morris <fqmorris at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> That's the whole point here, and it's not a small
> one in oeuvreof his entire ouevre.  His characters
often have bizarre names, names that make one ask the
> question "why?"  Is he just riffing on previous
> literature to no purpose?  Or picking animal names
to be cute?  Or does he have a grander design?  We're
> constantly forced to confront such questions w/
> Pynchon, which fits well shticks whole paranoia
schtick:  keep 'em guessing.

Well, I find the Introduction confusing because it is
but more so because of the appraoch that we've decided
to take here. Now, don't get me wrong, I appreciate
all Dave Monroe's deep burrowing and I'm glad Doug set
up the schedule and people have generously and
selflessly agreed to take turns hosting the
stories...and I'm not suggesting we can do anything
about the schedule at this late hour...but I think
this approach/plan/schedule is an awfully unfair (to
the author, not that he cares but...) and shabby way
to go about reading this particular book. By focusing
so much attention on so many of the details in the
Introduction, details that make little sense unless we
can discuss the stories themselves in some detail (but
the schedule prohibits this) we are like a bunch of
burrowing hedghogs under a monestery library. 

Hell, my daughter has a porcupine pet.  I know what
one looks like. And it is a mole like creature. My
daughter would never call it fuzzy because she knows
way too much about her pet to call it fuzzy.  But if
we could open the damned story we would discover that
Pynchon's Porpentine is a mole like creature too and
not exactly fuzzy either. So what? 

Porpentine doesn't care for the sun. Even on a cloudy
day, rain threatening, he covers himself. He wears
light tweeds. He has a child's gaze and a plumb 
angel's smile and seems by 98, to have grown cold and
unkind. He closes his eyes a lot.He is quaint,
anomalous,  pale, shy, has pursed lips, he is bashful.


His name is perfect if we disregard what most of us 
think of first when we think of porcupines, not the
fuzziness but the quills. But the Introduction is
still very loopy. 



>  
> > Got it. But fuzzy is a bad choice to describe a
> porcupine and the entire
> essay is loopy. 
> 
> Yeah.  When he finally deigns to open up is bag of
> tricks for us what he says
> makes no sense.
> 
> David Morris
> 
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