P defends V. ...

[Mark Kohut]

Just a kind of syllogistic analysis about Slow Learner Pynchon [1984] concerning 
V.

1) I'd published a novel; thought I'd learned a thing or two.
            1a) Either learned something because the novel was bad---and taught 
him how to write a good one OR
              b) The novel had [a thing of two] that was good about it.......

2) Then I forgot everything I had learned when I wrote my next: [story called 
"Crying of Lot 49"]
             2a) which sorta implies 1b) is true----because if he had learned 
something it showed in that novel
which he now 'forgot"..........................
             2b) Would be pretty peculiar, would it not, to say you had learned 
something from a failure---that wasn't
shown anywhere in your work----that you had already forgotten by the time you 
wrote your next failure?


I have long thought that the P of SL in 1984 dissed Lot 49 so thoroughly because 
he KNEW he had started it
with an overriding notion----The Trystero---and/or the ending---or even the 
whole IDEA of the book---so he did not
feel, as with his others, that he 'discovered' more during the 
writing.....pushing his perceptions, his connections,
his resonant meanings and ambiguities in the act of writing--as he must have in 
his others?

We, most, "excepting Alice", as Arlo Guthrie is always saying, still feel the 
power of the atmospheric conception AND as our
recent reread tried to show, still find insightful connections and some richness 
in the particulars......