P defends V. ...

[kelber at mindspring.com]

I don't find this theory despicable, it's highly plausible.  Publicity-shy Pynchon keeps his ego out of public view.  If there were an all-knowing super-confidant character in any of his books (Yashmeen?), I can't see P (young or old) using that character as a mouthpiece.  Slothrop and Benny are both described as physically kind of flabby - something which Pynchon doesn't seem to have been (in his few pictures), but in their state of paranoid, clueless, but not unintelligent schlemiel-dom, they seem to embody something of the self-deprecating, regretful author's voice of Slow Learner.  No literary evidence to support this - just gut feeling.

Laura

-----Original Message-----

>From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
>
>I'm going to throw out a despicable theory—find a passive-voiced  
>central figure in a Pynchon novel, look for echos of the author. Zoyd,  
>Slothrop, Benny, Doc, Mucho Maas.