SLSL "The Small Rain" - Creole, Louisiana

[pynchonoid]

watch the URL wrap -- Creole mapquested:

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?country=US&addtohistory=&address=&city=Creole&state=LA&zipcode=&homesubmit.x=21&homesubmit.y=14


As somebody noted, hurricanes are a big deal along the
Gulf coast. I grew up in New Orleans and Lafayette (a
bit east and north of Creole) where the hurricane
season took on social dimensions -- "hurricane
parties" where people would batten down and carouse as
the storms came nearer then struck (think of the
rooftop party in the Independence Day scenes when the
alien fleet arrives), to borrow a Pynchon trope that
he uses here in "The Small Rain" and again in GR 14
years later:  telling death to fuck off by celebrating
life in the presence of death.   

As noted in an earlier post, with the choice of title,
P might be seen to be playing with the Biblical
tradition of flood (destruction, then the rainbow to
symbolize a new covenant) and rain (to fertilize the
seeds of God's doctrine communicated in the "Song of
Moses" in Deut. 32 that provides one possible source
for the story's title).  Both the rainbow and the
small rain follow scenes of tremendous destruction --
in the Bible, and where they occur in Pynchon's
fiction, in GR and in "The Small Rain".

Whatever the story's shortcomings -- in Pynchon's
eyes, or in the eyes of other readers -- it's
interesting to see how here, in his first published
story, P introduces material, imagery, Biblical
references, that he will develop more fully in GR --
beginning an arc of sorts, a trajectory in his 
development as a writer.

-Doug




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