From the Ground Up

[Michel Ryckx]

I know that Luc H. has been working on this. Now another Project Muse 
article:

Herman, Luc "From the Ground Up: The Evolution of the South-West Africa 
Chapter in Pynchon's V"
Contemporary Literature - Volume 47, Number 2, Summer 2006, pp. 261-288

From: 
http://muse.jhu.edu/cgi-bin/access.cgi?uri=/journals/contemporary_literature/v047/47.2herman.html


When Thomas Pynchon sent the rewritten version of his first novel, /V/., 
to J. B. Lippincott editor Corlies ("Cork") Smith in the spring of 1962, 
he explained in his April 19 cover letter that the text was 
"short...chapter 9, i.e., Mondaugen's SW African adventure." ^1 He felt 
the chapter needed to be redone "from the ground up." Pynchon was only 
half-finished with the revision at that point, so he asked Smith for "a 
week or two more to screw around in." If that extension was impossible, 
then Smith could remove the paragraphs at the end of chapter 8 that led 
in to the South-West Africa adventure (/V/. 227–28), a passage in which 
the narrator introduces German engineer Kurt Mondaugen and describes him 
as telling his story, "over an abominable imitation of Munich beer" 
(228), to Herbert Stencil in the Rusty Spoon, a Manhattan bar. On April 
26, 1962, Smith encouraged Pynchon "[b]y all means" to "go ahead and 
screw around with Mondaugen's Southwest Africa adventure" but pleaded 
for delivery by May 10 "at the outside." *[End Page 261]* The 
correspondence we have does not indicate when Pynchon delivered the 
chapter, but on May 28, Smith wrote, rather...


	

	
		
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