Watts article

[jbor]

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_watts.html

on 24/9/04 8:59 PM, jbor wrote:

> For Pynchon's authorial self-identification with "the glozing neuters of the
> world" see GR 677, 738 &c.

See also the 'Sloth' essay.

The point isn't that Pynchon = Slothrop, of course. What is clear is that
Pynchon's narrator is empathising with Slothrop's equivocations, as opposed
to the supposed conviction of the "Wear-the-Pantsers" who are mockingly
apostrophised in the passage (676-7). And Pynchon certainly does make an
overt and self-conscious connection between Slothrop's "mediocrity" and that
of his "chroniclers" -- i.e. Pynchon, the author of GR, himself (738).

It's not a simple-minded judgement about the comparative worth of different
texts to point out that the potential "galvanising" effect of the 'Watts'
article in the NYT Magazine in 1966 on the general public's attitudes
towards contemporary political and social issues is far in excess of that of
a comic story excerpt published in Esquire or Cavalier, or of a 760-page
novel about WWII. No reasonable person would seriously contend otherwise.

Note also Pynchon's comment in the SL 'Intro' about the "positive and
professional direction" he was moving in when he wrote 'The Secret
Integration', and which he says was reversed with the publication of _Lot
49_ (22). It's worth pointing out again that the 'Watts' article sits snugly
in the space between those two self-assessed phases in his career.

best

on 24/9/04 9:03 AM, jbor wrote:

[...]
> Pynchon's article aligns most notably with 'The Secret
> Integration', not _Lot 49_, and I'd say it's that story that prompted
> Kirkpatrick Sale to ask Pynchon to write the piece.
> 
> The article exemplifies the fact that the Civil Rights Movement was the one
> cause in the '60s that Pynchon was committed enough to to pull himself away
> from his glozing neuterdom and to get out and do. A lot of readers don't
> like to accept this fact, for whatever reasons, but there it is. It is,
> after all, a piece of investigative journalism, Pynchon's only foray into
> that field.
[...]