SLSL 'Low-lands': racist, sexist and fascist talk

[jbor]

on 10/1/03 12:03 PM, tess marek at tessmarek at yahoo.com wrote:

> Perhaps you disagree with my other two pints:
> 
> 1. I'm not offended because the tale is not PC.
> 
> 
> 2. I'm not put off because I expect young Pynchon to
> have a different attitude.

No. I disagreed with the idea that they are the "attitudes of an apprentice
writer". The quality of the writing isn't the issue (or, it's a separate
issue). It's the attitudes themselves.

I also don't think that the "failure to create distance" between Flange and
the narrative voice (and Pynchon himself) is a problem (cf. the comments
later in the 'Intro' about "one's personal life" and "fiction"). At the time
he wrote 'Low-lands' Pynchon apparently identified both with Flange and with
the sorts of "racist, sexist and proto-Fascist" attitudes disclosed in the
story. 

But the 'Intro' also makes it clear that by 1984, at the very latest, he no
longer endorsed those attitudes: what he calls "male attitudes", and
"values" which were "widely shared" by "American men" in the '50s (p. 10).
It's noteworthy that in discussing this story he also seeks to distance
himself from _Playboy_, which makes the likelihood that he willingly gave an
interview to that mag. in late 2001 even more remote.

best