ATDTDA (18): intro

[Cometman]

Mark Kohut said:
> John gave us so much to think about here that I had to ...find time
> to think.
 >   v. good stuff....
>    

I agree, especially liking this:

(John Bailey)
> The point here for me might be the way in which
> the recorded discourse of a particular period doesn't just
> selectively refigure actual utterances, but informs future speech as
> well. 

--- which is what literary immortality is all about:
if the engineers strive to build better engines,
and the architects better buildings - things that
people will use lastingly - by the same token, that
is the brass ring or golden goose authors reach for.
Pynchon (eg) has said some things so well that people
tend to reach for phrases out of his books when they 
want to talk well about those things (and even has
said some things so well that people tend to remember
them for their own sake)

Back to Mark:
 Do P-listers use P-phrases? Two-way street, and
> all.
>   How much of the dialogue IS as 'pure' and natural as a tree, say
> (one of Pynchon's good things)...
>    

probably a minority opinion, but it all seems authentic to me.
Variations not only reflecting observable (or recorded)
speech patterns, but also thought-provoking and decorative
in various distinctive ways 

back to John:
>  What's the point of
> pointing this out? It could be a diversionary tactic: I can't do this
> stuff, so just let it go. Plot's in the same boat, there. But I can
> also see how admitting to these early errors might be the work of an
> author who's made conscious and sustained attempts to remedy them.

again, probably a minority, fanboy opinion, but 
subjectively to me (like, how do I know what the hell
_he_ was thinking when he wrote it - all I know's what actually
made it to the page and how
it hits me) he's criticizing something that was 
only "very good" from the standpoint of having 
become "much better" and doing it in keeping with the
general pattern of the intro to SL -- which the frame tale,
as it were, is whether he should buy the young himself
a beer (a musical cadence or suspension that isn't explicitly
resolved - he never does say whether he should in fact
buy his younger self a beer (but of course he should -
how could you not want to buy your younger self a beer?
though at times my own younger self may not have deserved...
but I digress) - but implicitly within the intro to SL is
the idea of yes in fact, in a way he is "buying his younger
self a beer", and by extension advising or mentoring
attentive younger writers on the "craft or sullen art" as
Dylan Thomas might have put it of writing -- sort of
like that Old Spice commercial from the 70s where the
spruce-looking mature sailor guy tosses a bottle of the
stuff to the youg fellow  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBeP8yc5P64
and also suggesting various ideas of how artistic maturity
might change one's ideas, themes, and how things that
may seem like good ideas at the time gradually give
way through trial & error (er, experiment & success...)
to proven good praxis...
the title Slow Learner, I believe (or, impute - how
the hell would I know what he actually means by it)
indicates that he is in fact quite humble about his
skills ("mediocrity...and in his chroniclers, heh heh)
but that he does at that point in his career
see various developments in retrospect and does
sense a gradual improvement

   
cometman

"that's what I need: a bottle of Old Spice!"



       
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