Another way to categorize TRPs oeuvre

[Mark Kohut]

that 'self-consciousness', even "smugness' is a nice ob to be reminded of.

There were some important maturing years between the TRP of the stories that he comments on in "Slow Learner' and the publication of V. I have occasionally wondered whether TRP might admit about The Whole Sick Crew what he apologizes for in the intro to SL.

Since I grant TRPjr just about everything that might be debateable--surely one of my reading flaws---, this is why I consider his perspective on The Whole Sick Crew to be satiric. 

Re: immaturity and sexism in some of the male-female interactions in "V.", I see "In Which Esther Gets a Nose Job" to be, perhaps, TRPs so-fine embedded story---going way beyond-hipster awareness---'refuting' such.

When are we all going to read/reread "V." (again)? 

MK


--- On Fri, 10/3/08, Rob Jackson <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:

> From: Rob Jackson <jbor at bigpond.com>
> Subject: Re: Another way to categorize TRPs oeuvre
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Friday, October 3, 2008, 10:03 PM
> It's the name by which they refer to themselves,
> revealing a self- 
> consciousness, even a sort of smugness, about their
> affectations of  
> 'hipness' and decadence - a bit like
> 'Lardass' Levine from 'The Small  
> Rain' (1959), and 'Meatball' Mulligan and even
> Callisto, with his self- 
> indulgently melancholic 'grippe espagnole', in
> 'Entropy' (1960).
> 
> So, yes, satire; but TP himself also admits to wearing
> those horn-rims  
> at one time (SL 'Intro', 1984, p. 8).
> 
> The only unself-consciously non-PC character (and all the
> more lovable  
> for it), who transgresses even the rules of literary
> chronology  
> through the texts, is good ole 'Pig' Bodine.
> 
> all the best
> 
> 
> > Date: Fri, 3 Oct 2008 16:34:03 -0700 (PDT)
> > From: Mark Kohut <markekohut@[omitted]>
> >
> > Whatever counter-culture flirting TRP was doing, he
> did call those  
> > characters The Whole Sick Crew.
> >
> > First time I read V., decades ago, when I was as young
> as the  
> > characters,
> > I stopped at the chapter where Pig acts worse than a
> "pig." I  
> > thought I was supposed to identify with them hip guys.
> And didn't.
> >
> > Years later, I came back and got it closer to right, I
> think.
> >
> > Satirizing in TRP runs even deeper than paranoia,
> imho.