VL to SL: Pynchon's Self-Characterization

[Joel Katz]

well i got high last night for the first time in months and it was a little 
weird.  this gay hairdresser guy kept hitting on me and squeezing my pecs.  
and i'm high so i'm trying to be all civil, but he keeps taking that as a 
sign of encouragement.  now i know how women feel when i harass them--which 
is to say, disconcertingly horny and open-minded.


>From: jbor <jbor at bigpond.com>
>To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Re: VL to SL: Pynchon's Self-Characterization
>Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2004 08:53:40 +1000
>
> > 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.)
>
>Pynchon describes marijuana as a "useful substance" -- there's no time
>limitation applied to that observation as is being insisted to quibble over
>this point. He admits that he was "tickled by all forms of marijuana
>humour": and I think you'll find that that circumstance has prevailed right
>up into his most recent novel (_Mason & Dixon_, 1997, published near enough
>to his 60the birthday). And, in fact, in commenting on the disparity 
>between
>"talk" and "availability" of marijuana "back then" it is implied that he 
>has
>witnessed that situation to have changed in the meantime. The suggestion
>that he wrote _Vineland_ in 1989 only is absurd.
>
>Another sentiment which recurs in each of his novels and might be 
>attributed
>as Pynchon's own is an outright contempt for lawyers:
>
>     Zoyd had come to consider the "legal system" a swamp, where a
>     man had to be high-flotation indeed not to be sucked down
>     forever into its snake-infested stench. (359)
>
>best
>

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