MMV

[jbor]

      'The Small Rain' was my first published story. ... Apparently
    I felt I had to put on a whole extra overlay of rain images
    and references to "The Waste Land" and _A Farewell to Arms_. I
    was operating on the motto "Make it literary," a piece of bad
    advice I made up all by myself and then took. (Pynchon: SL 4)

jbor wrote:

> Context:
> 'Mortality and Mercy in Vienna', Pynchon's second published story, ...
> 
> So low is Pynchon's regard for it that the story is not mentioned -- let
> alone included -- in the collection of his early stories published as _Slow
> Learner_ (1984). Pynchon describes the stories that have been included in
> that collection as "pretentious, goofy and ill-considered" (4); it's safe to
> say that he believed that 'MMV' is even worse.
> 
> Comment:
> With its ostentatious and often gratuitous references to ...
>
> Intertextual elements:
> The primary literary allusions in the story are to Conrad's _Heart of
> Darkness_ and, I suspect, to Hemingway's _The Sun Also Rises_ (or _Fiesta_).
> Pynchon, while showing off somewhat his own critical insights into these two
> novels, also appropriates imagery from both texts into his story in a
> thoroughgoing, though less-than-straightforward, way. ...