Red herring in the SL-intro?

[Mark Kohut]

Kai,

I have always taken this straight...there seems to me no evidence for
him to be joking about this in his otherwise sincere and self-critical
intro...

"Self-criticism is, etc....."

He is a massively ambitious writer, we know. He has pushed himself,
his mind, his art to his limits, I think we would agree...[again, 
the most telling overarching criticism of him might be that he IS TOO AMBITIOUS,
(as you might think applies to much of Against the Day, Kai..?) he patterns too
hard and loses that Shakespearean-like 'life on the page", those 'characters" to 
go
once more to that well---see flinty James Wood (and others) on him....

I think he is just as ambitious a 'critic'. i.e. a reader and I think that in 
1984, when he
wrote that intro, he really did---still does?--feel that 'he started with an 
idea first' with 

that work and therefore buried it as a 'bright book of life' [Lawrence].

As some lesser critic wrote, The Crying of Lot 49 is a work you cannot read 
twice (with
the same frisson of satisfaction)...

Most think that is wrong. Tolstoy dissed his two major masterpieces when he got 
older. 

There are other examples. 

Me thought it didn't work until later readings when I could ride some of those 
sublteties
in the scenes, the actions, the lines.....I was too earnest to laugh much my 
first reading
(my bad) but once you got past that suspenseful build-up to an ending you had to 
contextualize
----me speaking for me not for all) you had toi love it, I say.



 


----- Original Message ----
From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sun, March 27, 2011 3:30:40 PM
Subject: Red herring in the SL-intro?


Close to the end of the "Slow Learner"-intro Thomas Pynchon writes:

"The next story I wrote was 'The Crying of Lot 49', which was marketed as a 
'novel', and in which I seem to have forgotten most of what I thought I'd 
learned up till then."

Don't wanna appear pedantic, but me personally I cannot remember having read a 
'story' as long as "The Crying of Lot 49". I do, however, understand Pynchon's 
point since there is that (slightly silly) argument, that a novel must have at 
least 200 pages. But even this point taken, CoL 49 is not a 'story' yet a 
novella which Goethe defined as the picturing of an extraordinary event 
("Darstellung einer unerhörten Begebenheit"). But enough of that nit-picking 
criticism. What interests me more, is the second part of Pynchon's sentence 
which appears very strange to me. Does he really want to sell us that he prefers 
his early stories or the rather unbalanced "V" to "The Crying of Lot 49"? Hard 
to believe, guess Tom must be kidding. But why? Especially the prose-style of 
CoL 49 is as sophisticated as beautiful. Though I have a personal weakness for 
"Vineland", my judgment in 'objective terms' (if this makes sense) would be, 
that Pynchon topped the elaborated beauty of CoL 49 only in "Gravity's Rainbow". 
So let me repeat my question: Why is TRP dissing one of his most precious works 
of art? Me thought about this for a while, and the only possible reason I came 
up with is the fact that he had to write "The Crying of Lot 49" for money in 
order to get the necessary money to paint the Rainbow. Economic pressure plus - 
perhaps - some trouble with the magazines that were publishing it piece by piece 
way back when in the mid 1960s. But by the time "Slow Learner" got published, 
this was more than 15 years ago. Plus: A remark like this is not exactly a 
rational-choice-behavior when you want to making a living out of your books ... 
So I really don't get it. Has anybody an idea why Pynchon is either treating CoL 
49 like an unloved stepchild or trying to put us on? But maybe there is some 
tongue-in-cheek subtility that escapes my understanding. Anyone?

Kai Frederik