Pynchon's intro to Been Down So Long

[Bandwraith at aol.com]

I remember reading BDSL in the dorms several years after
it was published. There was no introduction. It was a 
paperback that sort of lived from room to room, survived 
summer breaks and somehow seemed to come to life again
the following September. When it fell into my lap, the draft 
was a very real concern, the Tet offensive had been beaten 
back (barely, pyrrhic-ly) earlier in that year, which also included 
the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and ML King. Chicago, 
a brief car ride from my campus, was still redolent with tear 
gas from the Democrat(ic) Convention.

GR hadn't been published yet. A few of us had heard the name
Pynchon (mainly from the Watts article), more recognized 
Farina (and Baez), almost everyone knew of Gnossos 
Pappadopoulis.

BDSL was not studied but it was well known. It was a
unique entity in its genre- a campus novel that actually
was a campus novel. In retrospect, it is interesting to
compare it with Barth's Giles Goat-Boy, published around
the same time, probably "better" written, certainly more
literary, but way less popular.

The addition of Pynchon's "Introduction" completely
changed the, the... I think I'm looking for a Walter
Benjamin term here... of BDSL. It probably also helped
rescue it for another generation, and, of course, provided
a stamp of literary legitimacy. To a certain extent, the
dedication of GR had also done that for Farina, but less
directly. 

regards