V-2nd C4 The Search for Bridey Murphy / corrigenda

[John Bailey]

Ah, just re-reading that Fast Learner piece now.

If Chapter 3 had come much later in the novel, it might have meant
that the reader would suddenly question the 'historical' chapters
they've read already, ie only in Chapter 13 (Under the Rose) would we
understand that this wasn't omniscient narration but a story being
told by Stencil, and the next chapter (V. in Florence) is being told
to Eigenvalue by Stencil as well.

I've always been struck by the unreliability of Stencil as narrator,
but this previous ordering would have made that a gradual realisation
rather than something we get from the outset.

On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 5:16 PM, Michael Bailey
<michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
> David Payne wrote:
>
>> Pynchon reworked the novel with these (and many other) changes in under 3 weeks, which astounds me.
>
> slow learner, fast writer?
>
>>
>> This is all a long way of suggesting that Chapter 4 wasn't really written to carry forward Chapter 3.
>>
>
> ok, but then those changes were made...  (-;
>
> Thanks for mentioning it.  I agree with Luc Herman and John Krafft
> that the changes do seem to be an improvement.
>
> Getting us started early on the Stencil thread seems like a good idea,
> since it is rather huge both
> in size and importance...
>
> and if his first draft was _not_ overtly mentioning Henry Adams, it
> seems like he was overestimating his readers
>
>
> ...although now, I wonder what his original scheme was: was he going
> to insinuate Stencil in more
> gradually and build up to the 8 impersonations?
> Because Chapter 3 *is* a whole lotta Stencil right off the bat...
>
> just to be a contrarian, I suppose...but in 2013 maybe for the 50th
> anniversary of its publication (and in celebration
> of surviving 2012) there could be a V. "director's cut"...
>
> now I know people say Whitman shouldn't have kept changing Leaves of
> Grass, but one more version of V couldn't hurt, could it?
>