SLSL Intro "Almost But Not Quite Me ..."

[jbor]

McHoul & Wills:

> the text itself calls
> explicitly 'a strategy of transfer' ([SL, "Intro," p.]
> 21)

The context of Pynchon's use of this phrase in the 'Introduction' is
criticism rather than endorsement, however:

"Why I adopted such a strategy of transfer is no longer clear to me." (21)

Pynchon is discussing 'TSI' and the "old Baedeker trick again" of shifting
his own Long Island "hometown ... landscape and the experiences I grew up
with" to the Berkshires (20-21). In fact, what he's overtly saying he's not
doing, and what McHoul & Wills seem to be trying to say he is doing, is
adopting this "strategy of transfer" in the 'Intro'. It's quite a bizarre
tactic on the critics' part, shamelessly ignoring the semantic thrust and
context of Pynchon's commentary. Of course, in the context of what he means
by the phrase, Pynchon's personal recounts and reminiscences in the 'Intro'
don't deliberately displace his own experiences at all. These are
acknowledged precisely for what they are.

The interesting thing for me is the admission that 'TSI' and 'Low-lands'
were autobiographical (cf. the mention of his former "unkind impatience with
fiction I felt to be 'too autobiographical'" &c on p. 21) , which, I think,
would position both Dennis Flange and Tim Santoro as authorial alteregos.
McHoul & Wills seem to have missed this very interesting point entirely.

best