Meet the New Boss (Pynchon's THEY or The Firm is Dead)

[Robin Landseadel]

On Aug 28, 2010, at 7:04 AM, alice wellintown wrote:

> So, to argue P is hard on V., even though he says nothing negative
> about it in that Introduction we've all read soooo many times we seem
> to have forgetted what the darn thing sez, becaue he critiques his bad
> ear exemplified in an slow learning tale, that is not simply folded
> into the novel, it is re-worked from the dialogue down, is to begin at
> the tail of the shaggy dog and chase his head round after it.


"He" includes The Crying of Lot 49 in the timeline of works written by  
that guy he's not so sure he wants a drink with. So that's the  
timeline the author is referring to when he talks about earlier  
writing that embarrasses him. He also provides a very confusing final  
comment as regards CoL49:

	. . . 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 thought I'd learned up till then.

Unlearning, as we all know, is much harder than learning.

	Most likely, much of my feeling for this last story can be traced to
	ordinary nostalgia for this time in my life, for the writer who
	seemed then to be emerging, with his bad habits, dumb
	theories and occasional moments of productive silence in
	which he may have begun to get a glimpse of how it was done.

So, what's "this story"—TSI or CoL49?

Beyond that:

	I had published a novel and thought I knew a thing or two, but
	for the first time I believe I was also beginning to shut up and
	listen to the American voices around me, even to shift my eyes
	away from printed sources and take a look at American
	nonverbal reality. I was out on the road at last, getting to visit the
	places Kerouac had written about.

He says he published a novel, thought he knew a thing or two, uses the  
past tense—get it?

Are you listening Terri? It's in the text. Deal with it.