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

[tess marek]

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> 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.

For young Tom Pynchon, as the mature man looking back
notes in the Intro, they go hand in hand. 

> 
> 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"). 

Well, I'm sure you agree that there is a big
difference between writing from experience (Pynchon
does this, i.e., the navy, Long Island, so on, but for
some reason he uses strategies to limit the the
autobigraphical elements) and creating a distance
between oneself as author (and implied author) and
narrative agency and/or character. Pynchon fails to do
this in Low-lands. This flaw, when combined with the
attitudes, is what is off-putting. Intro.21

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. 

Right. 

> 
> 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).

But I think some of the residual of sexism slips into
M&D. In VL, we have an earnest attempt to address the
sexist elements. P takes on his own racest attitudes
early on. 


> 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


Could be. But, I'd imagine that Playboy has not fixed
it's attitudes in 1950s sexism any more than Pynchon
has. Don't know about that Interview with Playboy
Japan. I would think I would have run into it by now
or Dave Monroe would have, but...not that I'm a
doubting Thomas it's just that I had the NY Public
Library search for it and they came up with Nada. 

Tess

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