Slow Learner - Thomas Pynchon

Goddamn, I love the work of Thomas Pynchon. This book, early short stories, is no exception. Collected in 1984, the five stories were first published at different times between 1959 and 1964. The New Republic called them “an exhilarating spectacle of greatness discovering its powers.” While I agree, Pynchon does not. This brings me to the by far the coolest thing about the book: Pynchon wrote the introduction.

An extremely private person, he doesn't give away shit about his personal life. He's got the nine books, of course, which can be described as postmodern literary historical fiction. I've read five. Love them all. One enough to inspire my first tattoo, a version of the "muted post horn" that's a symbol for the secret "Trystero" society that's at the center of The Crying of Lot 49. My personalized license plate, WASTE, is also a reference to the book, an acronym for "We Await Silent Tristero's Empire". 

His repertoire also includes essays on the Watts riots, sloth, and Luddites, book reviews and blurbs, introductions to classic works such as 1984 as well as fiction by his friends (these include Donald Barthelme, Jim Dodge, and Richard Farina), and liner notes for albums by bandleader Spike Jones (not to be confused with actor/director Spike Jonze) and indie-rock band Lotion. He has even done a few voiceovers, two for The Simpsons (in one he is shown with a paper bag over his head) and a publicity video for his novel Inherent Vice. These are must views, by the by. His work transcends conventional boundaries, encompassing a wide spectrum of genres, subjects, and mediums, reflecting his versatility, creativity, and multi-faceted talents as a celebrated writer. God, I love him. 

That said, none of this gives us much of anything about his personal life. In fact, he goes to great lengths to remain obscure. This has always been a part of his writing, as he sez he had “an unkind impatience with fiction I felt then to be 'too autobiographical.' Somewhere I had come up with the notion that one's personal life had nothing to do with fiction, when the truth, as everyone knows, is nearly the direct opposite. Moreover, contrary evidence was all around me, though I chose to ignore it,” (p.21). 

This intentional inaccessibility is partly why I'm confident he'll never win a Nobel Prize in Literature. He's been on the shortlist for years, but since they awarded one to Bob Dylan, which is bullshit, in 2016, and then the more deserving poet Louise Glück in 2020, they probably won't award another American for at least a decade or so. Plus the Nobel committee would have a second no-show to deal with since Dylan was absent from the banquet in his honor, saying that he had other commitments. (Of course, some expressed dissatisfaction with Bob Dylan's Nobel. One example at random, this from novelist Rabih Alameddin, who said on Twitter, "Bob Dylan winning a Nobel in Literature is like Mrs. Fields being awarded 3 Michelin stars.” I'm among the said camp.) Pynchon, for his part, never shows up for stuff like this which has caused some uproar. For the 1974 National Book Awards, when he won Best Novel for "Gravity's Rainbow", it was widely known that Pynchon was unlikely to attend. Part of that well-known aversion to public appearances. Instead of Pynchon, his publisher Thomas Guinzburg sent comedian Professor Irwin Corey as a stand-in that was introduced as the writer. Corey's absent-minded professor schtick was known for butchering highfalutin language with bad puns and was an all-around embarrassment for the ceremony. Therefore, I think it's safe to eliminate him from real consideration.

(Also, that whole Nobel award has a history of trash. It lost its significance long ago, being more political than based on literary excellence. Auden, Borges, Chekhov, Greene, Hardy, Ibsen, James, Joyce, Nabokov, Proust, Roth, Tolstoy, and Twain were all snubbed. All undeniable masters of the craft. Robert Frost and E.M. Forster were up for the prize in 1961 but were explicitly ruled out by the Swedish Academy “because of their advanced years.” Pynchon in his mid-80s is likely considered too old though in 2007 Doris Lessig won at the age of 88, the eldest winner to date. Since its conception in 1901, only seven writers in their 80s have won and two of those came between 1901-1910. Needless to say, criteria other than high art are obviously at play.)

The only exception to his lack of personal detail is the introduction to this collection, which makes this book especially cool. He talks about how he felt re-reading the stories after a long time in his typical humorous way, saying “You may already know what a blow to the ego it can be to have to read over anything you wrote 20 years ago, even canceled checks. My first reaction, rereading these stories, was oh my God, accompanied by physical symptoms we shouldn't dwell upon. My second thought was about some kind of a wall-to-wall rewrite. These two impulses have given way to one of those episodes of middle-aged tranquility, in which I now pretend to have reached a level of clarity about the young writer I was back then,” (p. 3). But he also shares some memories of when he first wrote them! It's the only time he gets a bit personal with his readers and was by far my favorite thing about the book. (One day soon select scholars will get more personal stuff as he sold his archive consisting of letters, notes, drafts, and so forth to the Huntington Library. The papers will provide valuable insights into his work but will include no photographs. I imagine getting access will be next to impossible though, so be warned.) The little tantalizing glimpse we get is of a modest guy that would be fun to party with. It obviously made me love him and want to learn about him even more.

Anyway, on to the book, which consists of five stories: “The Small Rain”, ”Low-lands”, “Entropy”, Under the Rose”, and “The Secret Integration”. Here's a brief rundown. “The Small Rain”, Pynchon's first published work, follows Nathan Levine, an indifferent Army enlistee stationed in New Orleans. Along with his fellow enlisted men, he is tasked with assisting in the cleanup efforts on Creole, a small island devastated by a hurricane. After a grueling day of retrieving dead bodies and sex with a local college gal, Nathan reflects on his uncertain future and contemplates how to move forward, if at all. Think of this as a test run for Gravity's Rainbow with lower stakes. 

”Low-lands” follows one Dennis Flange, a lawyer, who skips work to get drunk with Rocco the garbage man, much to his wife's annoyance. Once his old college friend Pig Bodine, whom the wife loathes, shows up, she kicks them out. For good. They go to the dump where they stay with the caretaker. There Dennis contemplates his life when ominous, unexpected shit starts going down. In the middle of the night, Dennis hears a voice and goes out to meet a three-foot-tall woman identified as a “gypsy” who asks him to marry her. Initially declining, he changes his mind when he sees her child-like appearance and agrees to stay for a while, saying that he always wanted kids. Here we get a lot of counter-culture fringe that could have been at home in The Crying of Lot 49. 

Speaking of counter-culture fringe “Entropy,” the third story of the collection, is possibly my favorite of the bunch (but I would maybe make that claim about the last two as well). It details a wild lease-breaking party hosted by one Meatball Mulligan. Chaos ensues with a mix of guests including cronies, servicemen, jazz musicians, philosophy majors, and sailors. Callisto and Aubade care for a baby bird while contemplating the Laws of Thermodynamics and entropy as a metaphor for society. The whole time the temperature outside remains 37 degrees Fahrenheit, fueling apocalyptic paranoia in Callisto. Among the challenges Meatball navigates there are managing drug use, conversations on communication theory, and an unexpected visit from the FBI, or some other agency. 

Two English spies, Porpentine and Goodfellow, are in Upper Egypt to track down their nemesis, Moldweorp, and figure out what he's up to. They suspect he plans to assassinate the Consul-General, so they travel to Cairo with Goodfellow's new girlfriend, Victoria Wren, her family, and a man named Bongo-Shaftsbury. Porpentine stops Bongo-Shaftsbury from sexually assaulting Victoria's sister and realizes he's an opposing spy. In Cairo, they find Moldweorp and his spies at the opera house, foiling the assassination attempt. A chase ensues, ending at the Sphinx where Porpentine and Goodfellow confront Moldweorp. Porpentine tells Goodfellow to go back to the cab, but Moldweorp shoots Porpentine and escapes. Sixteen years later, Goodfellow is with a new girlfriend, a barmaid who sees him as just an obsessive Englishman with money to spend. The story ends with them hearing rumors of an assassination plot against Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which you should from the history books for its monumental impact on the history of the 20th century. With all this spy stuff, double agents, and depravity whilst traipsing through foreign land, I'm reminded of Gravity's Rainbow, however, the story was apparently reworked into a chapter of his novel V. which I have not read but is probably next on my list. 

In the final story, "The Secret Integration," we are introduced to a cast of characters who would later become familiar faces in 2006's Against The Day, a group that goes by “the Chums of Chance.” Here, the daring youths embark on a mission codenamed “Operation Spartacus.” The ragtag group of boys (Tim, Carl, Etienne, and Hogan [they also have a great doggo, which is much appreciated on my end]) gather in their leader's basement (one Grover Snodd, who is something of a boy genius) to plan their upcoming “Project Mayhem” type mischief on the bigoted folks of Mingeborough, New York. Things are complicated when Hogan (who's been a member of AAA since age seven) receives a call to support a struggling member. They go to a hotel to help an African-American musician named Mr. McAfee whose staying there. Despite their attempts to help, Mr. McAfee is escorted out by the police for belligerence. 

Despite acknowledging the faults of his early stories in the intro as “bad habits, dumb theories,” he does not talk about how exceptionally good they are despite their supposed flaws. These stories show how from the beginning, he was able to transport readers into his wonderful, eccentric imagined worlds through incredible storytelling. An attentive, well-informed observer, he's astute, in-the-know, obsessively alert, zanily comedic. He effortlessly earns the reader's admiration with such qualities.

These brilliant stories are literary treasures that should not be overlooked, tour de force that they are. Still, though, his best work was ahead of him. As he writes at the end of the intro, “What is most appealing about young folks is the changes, not the still photograph of finished character but the movie, the soul in flux. Maybe this small attachment to my past is only another case of what Frank Zappa calls a bunch of old guys sitting around playing rock 'n' roll. But as we all know, rock 'n' roll will never die, and education too, as Henry Adams always sez, keeps going on forever,” (p. 23).