P: "Self-criticism..shouldn't work.. but it can"--and be as strange as Love,mebbe

[Steven Koteff]

I've been thinking a lot about the Slow Learner intro. The book's release had any number of personal/professional justifications, no doubt (which Kachka speculates on in that Vulture thing). But TRP is/was not ignorant of the degree to which he is ever pursued, not merely by predatory reporters and so forth, but by people who view him as a source of honesty and wisdom in these and all dark times. In the SL intro I think we see him coming to terms with the fact that people are going to take everything he says and publishes very seriously for at least probably the rest of his life. 

In light of that, I have been wondering to what extent that intro is a precisely crafted piece of writing on his part. We know from the novels the extent to which he can sustain a prose that is densely layered and encoded, or at least where every word is multiply resonant and purposeful. The intro, in contrast, seems straightforward and almost casual. But then it's so aberrant in his career, and kind of warmly acknowledges his own influence so much, that you'd have to think it is written with full understanding of the degree to which some people would try to use it as...evidence/justification/fatwa of...something. 

The intro is an interesting read if you go through it trying to ask yourself to whom it is addressed. He seems to actually care a great deal about what apprentice artists can learn from it. But also there is no doubt it is for the fans. 

But how earnest and how careful/purposeful is he about, say, the books he mentions? Can you imagine him writing the intro and thinking, okay, I will grant them (you guys, us) an acknowledgement of x number of sources? Can you imagine him deciding which sources to acknowledge and which not to? (On the Road gets two plugs, and how many others get none? Although maybe by this point, in this form, he isn't concerned with exhaustion or perfection.)

You say, Mark: All short story writers, all critics of the form that I know, believe 'complexity of plot" ruins stories

I am not disputing that the writers and critics you favor say this. And I do not dispute that the short story form is just not as well suited to TRP's talents than novels. 

But I don't think a complex plot NECESSARILY ruins a short story. 

Maybe this is cheating, but I think plots can be complex in a lot of ways. One is that short story plots can contain a lot of emotional complexity for the characters. Okay, sure. (And here I'm using "complexity" as both synonymous with and independent of "sophistication") Another is that even simple or straightforward plots can (and in any story should) engage with readerly expectations in complex ways. Short stories, in their compression, manage the EKG of audience expectations as carefully as jokes. 

I don't really disagree with you, Mark. Though I think maybe Pynchon is just being a bit glib there. It doesn't strike me as weird. Decades of removal make the unique perspective of having yourself written something even more complicated, I would guess. And I can understand how it'd be very difficult to see the early work as having a life of its own. (Not least because early work so seldom does.) But then I haven't reread the stories from SL yet. Maybe what you say will resonate more with me once I do. 

> On Feb 25, 2016, at 7:06 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> We know and most do not believe in P's own harsh judgment of The Crying of Lot 49. 
> 
> But, rereading Under the Rose and his words about it, leads to other questions about
> his harsh self-judgment. 
> 
> He sez, in minimizing Under the Rose that readers have become accustomed to Le Carre
> who 'has upped the ante" for the whole genre. Quote from TRP in 1984: "Today we expect a complexity of plot and depth of character missing from my effort here".  Well,...
> 
> Does that strike any others of you as ...weird? Le Carre writes novels ( i know of no stories 
> and if there are, they are seldom read or considered, right?) which give room for complexity
> of plot and depth of character. 
> 
> All short story writers, all critics of the form that I know, believe 'complexity of plot" ruins stories. All the unspooling and therefore contrived respooling, so to speak. And, if character is mostly revealed 
> in fiction by responses within actions and scenes, then of course real depth of character
> is unattainable. To reveal depth like a perfect snapshot is what many of the best stories
> do. As I think someone said (setting up story vs novel as snapshot--unity of effect--vs a 
> novel, a movie) 
> 
> Then he says this story is, "happily, mostly chase scenes" "for which I remain a dedicated 
> sucker"....invoking the eternal Road Runner plot. 
> 
> Really, TRP? Did we reread the same story? Perhaps you are conflating it with V, which 
> this plot line of, with Stencil and all, can feel more like a long chase scene. But here, I remember
> most that window spying scene, the conversations and interactions of the characters, Bongo-Shaftsbury saying: "You screamed at the Chief".."You said 'Go away and die'"
> 
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l