SLSL "The Small Rain" summary and comments

[pynchonoid]

source: 
http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/slowlearner/smallrain.html

Summary 

It is 1957 and the small town of Creole, Louisiana has
been demolished by a recent hurricane. A joint rescue
operation involving the Army, Navy, National Guard and
Red Cross has been put into effect, and Private First
Class Nathan "Lardass" Levine and the 131st Signal
battalion of Fort Roach, Louisiana, of which he is a
member of, have been called on to assist the effort.
Lazy and lackadaisical, yet possessing the highest IQ
in his battalion, Levine has spent the majority of his
"career" dodging work details and nursing his
impressive beer-belly, and this operation begins no
differently than any other. He and his companions
spend the first two days doing minimal work, watching
the work details gather the dead, getting drunk and in
sleeping late. However, the experience somehow affects
Levine, and the third day finds him awake at 7:00 AM
and sneaking into one of the clean-up work details.
The group silently works for the entire day,
collecting mangled and bloated corpses for embalming.
At 6:00 PM Levine catches a ride back to the college,
cleans up and goes out with a young coed he has met
the day before. The next day, the communications
set-up has been completed and, as he is allowed to
leave, Levine hitches a ride back to Fort Roach with
an anonymous PFC. 

Pynchon on "The Small Rain" 

Pynchon begins his self-criticism explaining that the
hurricane his story takes place after really existed,
and that a Navy companion who had been involved in the
rescue operation had filled him in on the details. He
then states that his writing was still in a stage of
development, and as a result, "The Small Rain" -- his
first published story -- featured a number of flaws.
First of all, Pynchon points out his failure to notice
that Levine's conflict over where to put his loyalties
was strong enough to generate a story alone. To
compensate for the supposed inadequacy, he felt it
necessary to "literize" the work with an unneeded veil
of rain images and references to "The Waste Land" and
A Farewell to Arms. 

He then draws attention to the embarrassing "case of
Bad Ear marring much of the dialogue, especially
toward the end" (Thomas Pynchon's Slow Learner, pg.
4). In attempting to incorporate his shaky
understanding of regional Southern accents into the
story, Pynchon complains that he allowed them to
become an element of the plot before he had developed
enough of an ear to properly do so. 

The author also discusses the story's troubling
treatment of mortality. He states that his was a
problem common to younger writers: the subject is
usually almost, but not quite dealt with. This is
shown through how his characters in "The Small Rain"
deal with death in adolescent ways. In his words,
"They evade: they sleep late, they seek euphemisms.
When they do mention death they try to make it with
the jokes" (Thomas Pynchon's Slow Learner, pg. 5). 

Finally, Pynchon explains the vagueness with which the
sexual encounter at the end of his story is written,
touching on the general nervousness about sex that
existed in the college-age subculture at the time. 

Commentary 

Despite the problems that Pynchon may have with his
first work, it remains an inventive and enjoyable
short story, and there are a few aspects about it
worth discussing. First of all, the character of
Nathan "Lardass" Levine is noticeably well developed,
as is his problem. The juxtaposition of his lethargy
and indifference upon his joining the work crews
clearly shows how his conflict is resolved, however
the permanence of Levine's change of ways is left
unestablished. Despite the fact that he makes the
decision to care, joining the cleanup of the dead
directly, the last line of the story has Levine
sleeping once again, on his way back to Fort Roach. 

It is also interesting to note that "The Small Rain,"
despite being his first published story, showcases one
of the elements central to Pynchon's writing style:
that of mimesis. Even in his college years, the author
had developed a taste for (somewhat) accurately
showing the real world. The work is based on an a
first-hand account of the post-hurricane rescue
operation, and the military terminology that creeps
into the story is an early indication of an attempt to
get the facts straight. Unfortunately, this attitude
was checkered in Pynchon's youth, as shown by the
small mistakes that pop up in some of the other Slow
Learner stories, but it is still no surprise that the
mimetic idea blossomed to the extent that it did in
his later works. 



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