P defends V. ...

[Robin Landseadel]

On Aug 29, 2010, at 8:31 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:

> 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.......

But the phrasing— "thought I'd learned a thing or two"— boils down to  
"I didn't learn a damned thing."


> 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 read enough to know that Pynchon did not like the experience of  
writing or publishing CoL49. At the same time his remarks in Slow  
Learner concerning that project have a curious ambiguity.

> 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?

My "projection" as regards CoL49 is that the author  in 1984  
recognizes that a lot of what's bad in "Entropy"—the very stuff that  
made it attractive to academics—gets repeated and expanded in CoL49. A  
lot of what the author is saying in "Slow Learner" is a warning to  
academics that these early stories probably shouldn't be taught except  
maybe as examples of what not to do when writing.

> 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......

I got "into" Pynchon via CoL49. I suspect that those who got "into"  
Pynchon via "V." got sucked into its Cabals and Caries much as I got  
sucked into the Tristero. The difference here is that I always had a  
difficult time absorbing "V." and really wasn't sure why. Now I have  
some understanding of what exactly it is that turns me off. Of course,  
there's bad ear in CoL49, I ignored it because there was so much in  
Oedipa's quest that I could identify with. It also helps that CoL49 is  
compact. But I don't like the novella nearly as much as I used to.  
 From where I'm sitting now, I can much more clearly see what's wrong  
with the Crying of Lot 49.

In any case, I'm keeping up my end of the deal for "V.", throwing  
spitballs and making catcalls as promised.