Pynchon & Ellison: An Ambiguous Journey Into An American Dilemma

[Jerome Park]

The revisions of V., specifically those that pertain to Sphere are
fascinating to Pynchon readers in may respects, but what strikes this
reader most is not  that young Pynchon was so interested in, so fascinated
with (see his adoring description in Intro to BDSL of the Cuban/Irish
Farina circa the Spring Equinox) the Other in America. He wasn't alone, of
course. That after failing with Sphere Pynchon would give it a go again in
his short story, "The Secret Integration", then write Watts, and eventually
get to Tyrone Slothrop, a protagonist that he modeled, in part, after
Ellison's Invisible Man, tells us something about Pynchon's Journey into
the ambiguous American Dilemma, and, it also tells us quite a bit about the
author's ethics, morals, politics...

 GUNNAR MYRDAL’S *An American Dilemma* is not an easy book for an American
Negro to review. Not because he might be overawed by its broad
comprehensiveness; nor because of the sense of alienation and embarrassment
that the book might arouse by reminding him that it is necessary in our
democracy for a European scientist to affirm the American Negro’s humanity;
not even because it is an implied criticism of his own Negro social
scientists’ failure to define the problem as clearly. Instead, it is
difficult because the book, as a study of a social ambiguity, is itself so
nearly ambiguous that in order to appreciate it fully and yet protect his
own humanity, the Negro must, while joining in the chorus of “Yeas” which
the book has so deservedly evoked, utter a lusty and simultaneous “Nay.”

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/an-american-dilemma-a-review/
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