SLSL Pynch's Last Tape

[jbor]

on 11/1/03 1:02 AM, The Great Quail at quail at libyrinth.com wrote:

>> But the 'Intro' also makes it clear that by 1984, at the very latest, he no
>> longer endorsed those attitudes
> 
> And yet, "Mason & Dixon" seems even looser than "Vineland." I would love to
> see *another* introduction by Pynchon, maybe an Introduction to the
> Introduction of "Slow Learner," one that takes "Vineland" and "Mason &
> Dixon" into account. Sort of a "Krapp's Last Tape" thing. After all, the
> souring of the Left after 1984, the emergence of PC attitudes as a near
> tyrannical force in some academic/literary quarters, the relative freedoms
> of the 90s and their generation.... It would be interesting to hear where
> Pynchon now stands....
> 
> (This is not to imply he would be more conservative, but I am curious to
> know if a new Introduction would be less, well, pedantic and harsh. I know
> Pynchon is a leftie, and I am not making a case for anything else! ;)
> 

I don't know if it's just '70s-80s PC, and I don't have a problem with the
'Intro' at all. I think Pynchon's attitudes to race and racism changed quite
soon after the time this story was written. 'The Secret Integration' and the
'Watts' article demonstrate this pretty conclusively I think, but even in
_V._ we get the same sorts of characters and side-stories as in 'Low-lands',
but they're not automatically racially-labelled as "two Chinese wipers"
(what difference does it make that they're Chinese?), for example, and we
don't get Negroes dressed unironically in pork-pie hats any more. And
Pynchon seems to have a much more thorough grasp of late 19th and 20th
Century history by the time he wrote that novel.

As for sexism, well, I think _Lot 49_ is, in part, a deliberate attempt to
portray women a little less chauvinistically than he had done previously,
although the characterisation of Oedipa as an actual biological woman isn't
a particularly effective one (Grace Bortz is good though).

But it's not surprising that Pynchon's attitudes should develop, along with
the times (Civil Rights, the Feminist movement etc), and that these
developments should manifest in his work.

I think it's worth thinking through the "proto-Fascist" descriptor as well
("proto-" ?!), and having a close look at those elements in the story which
might have earnt such a censure. A lot of nonsense gets written about
"Pynchon's politics", but there are definitely political overtones in his
work. Actual, conscious ones.

By the way, I read _Vineland_ as denouncing the radical Left of the 60s
almost as harshly as it denounces the New Right of the 70s and 80s.

best