V. 101.....pure speculation; skip if you hate this stuff.........

[Mark Kohut]

Of course, he is still learning (a lot) but no longer as a 'slow learner', self-effacingly. Many, most, almost all? of his lifelong tropes, themes,
obsessions, styles are in V. as we will see, I think.  A quantum change from most of his shorter work...(of course, a large novel would be, but many writers'
first novels are like their earliest stories only fuller, richer, better if they work. TRPs novels move into the largest questions of the meaning of life, history, religion, etc.)

Entering Cornell at a precocious 16, he graduates at the usual age after two years in the Navy,
as we know.  What one can do in service, on ships, wherever, in the Navy is read. A lot, if one is inclined. 

He was self-effacing at Cornell, in many ways, shy is the going word. Starting as an engineering major---
despite wanting/committing to be a writer from high school (or earlier), why this major? Anyone, anyone?

Why? : he was good at it and figured he would need a job in the real world when he graduated? Maybe.
He did not need an English major to learn to read well.....

Pure unprovable speculation from me. In one of his self-advertisments or interviews, Norman Mailer once said it
was better to learn SOMETHING besides English in college if one wanted to be a writer because that SOMETHING
would give one a stock of metaphors and perspectives and depth for whatever one wrote. Norman was also an engineering
major, I believe. Aeronautical, I think. You can look it up, I'm sure......


Again, I'm just bloviating like Vanderjuice, nothing but spec, but I would suggest that TRP read The Recognitions in the Navy...
was deeply taken with it. it is FULL of buried allusions and ideas much as TRPs work from V. on is...Besides Eliot, and Rilke, it seems to me that The Recognitions is one of THE major books, along with Ulysses, most like P's in allusive style. Anyone, anyone?

I might also suggest works like The White Goddess & Eliade & Henry Adams were sucked down. (Like beer from Beatrice's taps to a brilliant mind wanting to understand everything about how humanity, religion, life---the meaning of it all--- got to TRPs historical time).
 
More spec. We know from his later 60s letter that he had conceived the major books that he has come to write early...when does anyone suspect he conceived   V.? After the Navy, back at Cornell reading and writing all he could? Only when at Boeing? 
 
I suggest that, given the care and time he spends on his work, that he would not have had enough time to write V.---lotta history, detail, complexity in it----and it ain't 'short' like Lot 49---from later Cornell on.
 
I suggest, unproveably until we hear from him or from those who knew him, that he conceived V.---the first full vision statement---while in the Navy and 
probably started writing it there as well....anyone read/heard anything concerning this?  
 
Mark 




 


----- Original Message ----
From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sun, June 6, 2010 7:29:32 PM
Subject: Re: V. 101

> Winner of the Wm Faulkner Foundation Award for Debut novel.
> Nominated, yes, for a National Book Award. His slow learning is long over.

Not true. His slow learning is far from over. In fact, the slow
learner period includdes V. and the best of the collection, "The
Secrtet Integration" or his apprentice work. We should not ignore this
fact as we read V. again. It is a wonderful debut novel. I love it.
But it is not a work that ends or even leaves his slow learning
behind.