A Few Thoughts on Pynchon After a Rereading of the Slow Learner Introduction

[Roman Kudryashov]

A Few Thoughts on Pynchon After a Rereading of the Slow Learner Introduction
Subtitle: He Told Us Himself!


1: Familial History in his Novels
Quote: Not only did I complicate this Long Island space, but I also
drew a lone around the whole neighborhood, picked it up and shifted it
all to the Berkshires, where I still have never been. The old Baedeker
trick again... (21) [interjection: he did admit to looking it up this
time though]

Quote: Why I adopted such a strategy of transfer is no longer clear to
me. Displacing my personal experience off into other environments went
back at least as far as "The Small Rain." Part of this was an unkind
impatience with fiction I felt then to bee "too autobiographical."
Somewhere I had come up with the notion that one's personal life had
nothing to do with fiction, when the truth, as everyone knows, is
nearly the direct opposite. (21)

Thoughts: As the conversation back here went not too long ago, about
Pynchon's familial history being represented and played out in his
books. Here, Pynchon explicitly states that he used his own life and
experiences and just changed everything about them to make them
unrecognizable, unless they were obscure to begin with. So that theory
can be certified, red versus blue family battle and history.

2. On Spies, Pynchon, and a General Sense of Dread
Quote: I was also able to steal, or let us say "derive," in more
subtle ways. I had grown up reading a lot of spy fiction, novels of
intrigue, notably those of John Buchan... The net effect was
eventually to build up in my uncritical brain a peculiar shadowy
vision of history preceding the two world wars. Political
decision-making and official documents did not figure as much as
lurking, spying, false identies, psychological games. Much later I got
around to two other mighty influences, Edmund Wilson's "To The Finland
Station" and Machiavelli's "The Prince", which helped me to develop
the interesting question underlying the story--is history personal or
statistical? [He further goes on to talk about the cold war, James
Bond, the apocalypse, etc.] (18)

Quote:
Most of is, happily, is chase scenes, for which I remain a dedicated
sucker--it is the one place of puerility I am unable to let go of.
(19)

Thoughts: Well that certainly shows in his fiction, more-so later than
in his Slow-Learner collection. Take Crying of Lot 49, for example,
with it's shadowy version of history (Taxis and Turnes, sorry if I'm
getting them wrong, I dont have the book at hand), Oedipa's general
sense of dread at the world, it'll slow collapse as the story
progresses, everything getting more shadowy and people losing thier
minds, whether on thier own or because of other rogue agents. Spy
novels indeed. furthermore, pulp spy novels, like pulp fantasy and
pulp science fiction, often takes course in an often cheesy and a bit
unrealistic matter. Take the sex scenes for example: their
unrealistic, cheesy, humoristic take evokes (for me, at least), the
sense to expect in a pulp book from the thirties (though Pynchon
touches up on sex in his writing as well, a bit earlier in the
introduction, saying it was about his nervousness concerning it and
the general political nature regarding pornography in the 50s and 60s,
but no matter, you would be nervous and apprehensive if what you know
of it came from pulpbacks.)

Thoughts: Furthermore, I believe it has something to do with Pynchon's
reclusive mentality as well. All reports say that he is not an
antisocial loner, that he has plenty of friends and acquaintances (and
as the intro to "Been Down So Long" and "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues"
shows, he has people he sees on a regular basis, a normal life, etc,
and had we not known he did not like publicity, we would have been
safe to say he was just a regular guy somewhere). I believe, that
although not completely, part of his tendency to shy away from
publicity comes from those childhood spy novels where being recognized
was a bad thing, lack of skill as a spy, something negative, and he is
just living out part of a vivid imagination. Moreover, he claims that
he loves chase scenes, part of his youth he cannot let go of. More
backup towards this theory that his is living out his spy/roadrunner
childish cartoon fantasy. He lives the thrill of the chase, where here
is happens that he is running from publicity.

3. He Is Not Omniscient
Quote: Since I wrote this story I have kept trying to understand
entropy, but my grasp becomes less sure the more I read (14).... such
considerations were largely absent when I wrote "Entropy." I was more
concerned with committing on paper a variety of abuses, such as
overwriting... I still dont even know for sure what a tendril is. I
think I took the word from T.S. Eliot. I have nothing against tendrils
personally, but my overuse of the word is a good example of what
happens when you spend too much time and energy on words alone. This
advice has been given often and more compellingly elsewhere, but my
specific piece of wrong procedure back then was, incredibly, to browse
through the thesaurus and note words that sounded cool, hip, or likely
to produce an effect, usually that of making me look good, without
then taking the trouble to go and find in the dictionary what it
meant. (15)... Because the story has been anthologized a couple-three
times, people think I know more about the subject of entropy than I
really do. Even the normally unhoodwinkable Donald Barthelme has
suggested in magazine interview that i had some proprietary handle on
it. (12)... So as a corollary to writing about what we know, maybe we
should add getting familiar with our ignorance, and the possibilities
therein for ruining a good story. (16) ...The next story I wrote was
"The Crying of Lot 49," which was marketed as a "novel" and in which I
seem to have forgotten most of what i though I'd learned up till then.
(22)

Thoughts: Though Pynchon further goes in the introduction to point out
more cases of ignorance, including one where he lifted a line from an
opera to find out the line he lifted was talking about the Spanish
influenza instead of soldiers like he thought, the point in delivered
clear enough: Pynchon is not omniscient, as many seem to think he is.
Like he claims, he liked to go through a thesaurus and use words that
sounded cool. And from Pynchon's standard of cool, we get "entropy"
and the likes. That is not to say that I am implying that Pynchon does
not know what he is talking about. The man did go to Cornell and does
write accurately on many, many things and topics, but are we giving
him too much credit? Sure enough, people seemed to think he was an
authority on entropy, but he admits, no, not really. Similarly, though
he might have a strong grasp on many things, he is still fallible and
some of his allusions are just wrong (case and point of the
soldier/Spanish influenza). sure enough, taking a wrong allusion, we
can read into it and draw conclusions anyway, but that just brings
about the question of are we analyzing, and not just Pynchon's work,
but a lot of things? Granted, dont rag on me, I think hes an amazing
writer and his works leave lots of room for analysis and have
incredible depth, but how much of it is his, and how much are we just
extrapolating onto overwritten word choice and drawing conclusions
that weren't exactly meant to be drawn?

Roman K.