Foreword "Why I Write"

[Paul Nightingale]

Terrance accuses Pynchon of idiosyncratic composition and an odd sense
of humour, but we all know he's joking.

So why did P write this Foreword? I happen to find his non-fiction (sic
- see below) interesting, but since I'm off-the-wall I guess that
figures.

As I said before I assume he was commissioned. A knock at the door, an
offer he couldn't refuse. Someone somewhere thought it appropriate to
hire him. He became a hireling. Perhaps someone thought the only way of
shifting enough copies of yet another edition of this over-hyped
'satire' would be to have P guesting (both a hireling and guesting,
holding two thoughts at once). I was persuaded to read Stone Junction by
P's introduction. A bad mistake - loved the intro, hated the novel (a
feeble rip-off of COL49 as I recall). At this point I had to make up my
mind. Does P really admire this awful novel, or is he having a laugh? Is
he having a laugh now?

I'm still waiting to buy my own copy (yes, marketing has conned me, a
fool and his money etc) and I'll reserve judgement until I've read the
entire piece beginning to end. From what I've read so far, the extracts
Dave Monroe has posted, I find P's Foreword interesting in the same way
I find his other forewords and introductions and essays interesting, as
another kind of fiction. Perhaps he's thinking aloud. I wrote earlier
that he was (or might be) considering social class in a way he hadn't
previously - perhaps his next novel will corroborate this point (or blow
it out of the water).

Unrelated but related. References to James Kelman have just passed
through my inbox. A wonderful writer, European rather than British, he
is quite disdainful of the Oxbridge litindustry. I've just started
reading his new collection of essays, reviews etc - worth mentioning
here because the introduction (not being a literary giant like Orwell,
he had to write it himself) is itself a challenge to literary
convention. He writes non-fiction as he writes fiction, claiming the
freedom to be, what's the word, idiosyncratic. And his sense of humour's
pretty cool as well.