Re: Studies in Unmeaning: On Thomas Pynchon’s Detective Fictions

[Joseph Tracy]

Then I don't know where I read it. I got Slow Learner from the library 
and that's the only place I could imagine having read it. Did someone 
post it through the list and there was a brief discussion? It was rather 
juvenile as a revenge story. Sucks? Maybe. But maybe the nuclear aspect 
of GR  along with the time distortion is bit of that too. I know I'll 
get slammed for that. My real point is that most revenge against America 
stories are paranoid delusions of the most despicable Americans  and 
possible false flags, while Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the 
extermination of most Native American tribal cultures, the US civil war, 
the bombing of Cambodia, Shock and Awe,  the mass killing in the 
Philippines and Indonesia etc. are the general pattern, similar to other 
empires.


    I find only 3 alternative history type endings in P's work. GR 
-nuclear war as revenge of colonized, ATD- east and west ascend into 
grace, ST- descent into fascism( looking very similar to actual 
bipartisan direction). Most leave where they started as far as any major 
historic change. We know a bit more about the game and it's players, we 
know technologies push civilization in new directions. Eucatastrophe 
type inner or outer changes? Not so much.

I am reading The Divine Comedy though not sure I am willing to claw my 
way through the rest of hell and then purgatory and may will  just skip 
a lot of the middle cantos  to see what is up in Dante's paradise. V is 
a huge nod to Dante, but offers only the briefest glimpse of heaven in 
Benny's love affair with the Latina young woman.  He seems to miss this 
chance and end up pretty damn stuck, which is the primary characteristic 
of Dante's hell. At best he is bouncing back forth between hell and 
purgatory like a yo yo.

It often seems that Pynchon can imagine no alternative to the Dante plot 
but escape, or private contentment in marriage ( M&D, maybe BE, maybe 
ST, maybe V). Escape seems the most common ending, or in ATD escape plus 
married contentment, or escape through renunciation/monasticism). 
Perhaps Cyprian Latewood is the closest to Dante's hero/self.



On 9/28/26 1:41 AM, Michael Bailey via Pynchon-l wrote:
>   He left "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna" (title is a quote from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure) out of Slow Learner.
>
>
>    *
> There's some buzz about some editions of Slow Learner having it, but nothing definitive
>    *
> https://www.reddit.com/r/ThomasPynchon/comments/xa5s0n/long_edition_of_slow_learner/
>
> It's not mentioned in the Intro. I think he was wise, because it sucks, but what do I know?
>
>
> Here's an article from Pynchon Notes about it - this person likes it
> file:///home/mike/Downloads/pn-2794-keesey.pdf
>
> I think it's only available in a) the "Epoch" Cornell magazine, b) a small unauthorized chapbook
> And of course c) all over the place online
>
> https://shipwrecklibrary.com/the-modern-word/pynchon/sl-mortality/
>
> ________________________________
>
> Joseph wrote:
>
> Gravity's Rainbow in overall arc could be seen to imitate the revenge
> story in Slow Learner about the Native American. Personally,  I think
> this was never in the cards. The way things are likely to go,  it is not
> the uprising of the victims of empire that is likely to launch a nuclear
> war, but the endless paranoia about uprising  of some devil filled
> emperor who thinks he is the immortal Zeus.
>
>
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l