SLSL Succession of the Criminally Insane

[Terrance]

Steve Maas wrote:
> 
> "(...) that succession of the criminally insane who have enjoyed power since
> 1945."
> 
> How could any thinking person seriously doubt the essential truth of this
> observation?
> 
> Steve Maas

Thomas R. Pynchon doubts the essential truth of this statement after he
re-issues his Slow Learner stories with the Introduction from which this
statement is taken. 

The proof that Pynchon doubt the essential truth of this statement is VL
and M&D. 

And, the Introduction is confusing, especially on issues like this one
(race-power-class)  because Pynchon's doubt (his doubt and uncertainty
about lots of things, even going so far as to doubt that any of his
earlier fiction is any good, including GR) compounds the fact that he is
a loopy, flip, and overall poor essayist.  

Moreover,  in the fiction prior to VL and M&D, Pathological behavior
(including the use of the BOMB) is not the exclusive privilege of the
ruling class in Pynchon's fiction. 

Bad History, in the novels prior to VL, is certainly Enlightened White
Powerful and Mechanistic, but the pathology infects every member of the
Sick Crew. After GR Pynchon doubt becomes a certitude about the function
of narrative, the efficacy of story telling. So, while the powerful
story teller (Reagan, for example) continues to have 
a big influence on the children of the forever young (i.e. Prairie at
the character and allegorical levels, the boy who watched McNiel on PBS
and apes Reagan's ploy of holding his hand to his ear) he needn't. Not
if the family has an old story teller like Wicks about the house. 

Many readers miss this when they read Pynchon because they are such
products of Nixon and Vietnam that they refuse to see Reagan as Pynchon
presents him or read VL as an equal indictment of both political myths.
Reagan and Zoyd,  Natty Bumppo and Rip  define one another in an S&M
bind of Individualism and Community and drawing a distinction or a line
between them is the beginning of Devastation, War, Bad History. What is
needed is what is longed for, a story, a narrative, one with Indians,
French ladies, Magic.