more prolegomena: writing timeline for V.?

[Ian Livingston]

I also agree. If P were writing furiously, too much of the historical
content seems problematic. Seems to me a writer develops by practicing
his trade and it is likely the stories grew out of character studies
that evolved into what we read in Slow Learner, and that those
exercises prepared him for the work since. V. seems too rich and full
to have sprung full grown from the head of P. Those tricks are for
gods. However brilliant, P. remains a man.

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 7:32 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> John Bailey writes:
> "unless it was only later that he decided to cannibalise another
> inferior work for spare parts (a practice I commend)."
>
> I would vote for this...it keeps my argument alive, for one reason.
>
> MMiV would have been written by end of 1958 for a Spring '59 publication.
> And, maybe much earlier?.....maybe writing it led him to places--physical, thematic--
> that became V. (I agree it doesn't 'fit' V. as 'Under the Rose' does.)
>
> Or maybe an outtake, at first, from what was becoming V.?
>
> V. has so many stencilings............
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com>
> To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Tue, June 8, 2010 9:10:48 AM
> Subject: Re: more prolegomena: writing timeline for V.?
>
> Mortality and Mercy in Vienna was published Spring 1959 (according to
> my quick googling, could be wrong).
>
> Though that piece is reworked in V. it doesn't feel as if it was
> written when V. was a coherent concept in its author's mind - or, at
> least, very little of what's interesting about V. is present in M&MIV,
> I reckon. So I wouldn't imagine that there was much of V. in 1959,
> unless it was only later that he decided to cannibalise another
> inferior work for spare parts (a practice I commend).
>
> Also: whatever happened to that earlier version of V. that's in some
> archive somewhere? People here have seen it, if I'm not wrong. When
> does that date to? If whole sections of that one were reworked (think
> they were) then that would bolster the image of the younger Pynchon as
> someone who worked at a pretty furious rate.
>
> On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 10:15 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> If V. was in bookstores by Feb 1, 1963, this means it shipped from the publisher by late December 1962 (or earliest January). Maybe, per the novel's opening, on Christmas Eve?
>>
>> This also means the complete, finished manuscript must have been with Cork Smith, his editor at Lippincott, by March--May 1962. Even May would be pushing it. If we presume, as TRP did with GR, he retyped V. from whatever he had written it on---engineer's paper here too, I think---that would likely have meant the penultimate draft was finished perhaps by end of 1961 or slightly later.  (I believe Prof Krafft, at least, has seen the manuscript or the outtakes where some of Cork's suggested cuts reside.) This is close to the tightest best case and it is possible Cork Smith had it complete much earlier in 1961.
>>
>> Pomono site:
>> Pynchon was graduated in June 1959. [After graduation he began work on his first novel. Disputed--MK] During this time, from February 1960 to September 1962, he worked as an engineering aide at Boeing, writing technical documents for the Bomarc Service Information Unit and the Field Support Unit for the Minuteman missile project, both nuclear missile projects. In 1963 Pynchon published V. and won a William Faulkner Foundation Award for best first novel of the year.
>>
>> I would guess that TRP quit Boeing right after, or to do, final proofreading of V. in September 1962...within three months, standard time, of final 'going to press'.
>>
>> So, if TRP did not start writing V. until he graduated, then he finished it in 2 and 1/2 years,[6/1959--12/1961] while working full time for about two of those years.
>>
>> Unlikely to me. Too big, too much history. TRP takes too much care. You?
>>
>> So, if my timeline is more or less right, then it adds to Alice's and TRPs judgments that V. was continuing slow learner work. Some of it might have been being written while at Cornell later, overlapping maybe with some of the stories published then. As i said, it might have been started in the Navy. The Secret Integration was published later than the story Under the Rose, for example---which appears in V. changed a lot, of course.
>>
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-- 
"liber enim librum aperit."