VL to SL: Pynchon's Self-Characterization

[davemarc]

In a discussion of Vineland, jbor writes "middle-aged dope-smoking hippies
are satirized but Pynchon
characterises himself as, nearly enough, one of that crew (in the
contemporaneous _Slow Learner_ 'Intro') etc."

Later, asked for a reference supporting that remark, jbor cites Slow Learner
8.16-20 as a passage where Pynchon characterizes himself as a dope-smoking
hippie.

In my edition of Slow Learner, the passage in question is part of a
paragraph that begins "[8.14] I enjoyed only a glancing acquaintance with
the Beat [8.15] movement. Like others, I spent a lot of time in jazz clubs,
[8.16] nursing the two beer minimum." Then comes what I believe to be the
passage jbor cites:

"I put on hornrimmed [8.17] sunglasses at night. I went to parties in lofts
where girls [8.18] wore strange attire. I was hugely tickled by all forms of
[8.19] marijuana humor, though the talk back then was in [8.20] inverse
relation to the availability of that useful substance."

It appears to me that this is Pynchon writing about being on the distant
fringe of the Beat movement pre-1965, possibly before the term "hippie" was
coined but certainly before any (or more than a very, very few) hippies were
middle-aged. Pynchon is surely describing himself in his 20s, not
middle-age. And he does not quite admit to smoking dope in that section.

So I guess that it could be true that Pynchon characterizes himself in that
passage as a middle-aged dope-smoking hippie--if Pynchon happens to think
that he was "nearly enough" middle-aged in his 20s.  That might explain why
Pynchon would also characterize himself ("nearly enough") as a dope-smoking
hippie when describing himself as having a glancing relationship with Beat
culture and being amused by marijuana humor during the early 1960s or late
1950s .

But I just don't buy it. Perhaps we have substantially different editions of
Slow Learner--my edition was published in 1984 but Vineland was published at
the very end of 1989. (I'm not even sure that "contemporaneous" is the most
accurate word to use in describing the relationship of the intro and the
novel.)

d.