Delinquent Juvenilia

It’s almost inevitable that any author will consider their juvenilia as inferior to their later or more mature works (especially if they made the transition from short stories to fully-fledged and ambitious novels).

Thomas Pynchon is no different in his perspective on the five short stories in this collection (which were originally published between 1959 and 1964. Only the last story was published after one of his novels n  (“V.”).n

From “Under the Rose” to "V."

It’s generally known that Pynchon was working on all of his first three novels at the same time, but chose to prioritise them differently, both in terms of completion and publication.

However, it became apparent from reading the short story “Under the Rose” (1961) (the fourth in this collection) that there is a creative link between at least this story and the third chapter of “V.”

Both works are set in colonial Egypt (Alexandria and Cairo). Both feature the characters Victoria Wren, (the daughter/wife/mistress of) Sir Alastair Wren, Eric/Hugh Bongo-Shaftesbury, Goodfellow, Porpentine and Lepsius. Some of the text is common to both works, although they stand separately. Thus, to criticise the short story is to be equally critical of at least part of the novel. Pynchon himself acknowledges as much when he writes in the Introduction:

n  “If only for its good intentions, I am less annoyed with ‘Under the Rose’ than with the earlier stuff. I think the characters are a little better, no longer just lying there on the slab but beginning at least to twitch some and blink their eyes open, although their dialogue still suffers from my perennial Bad Ear...Today we expect a complexity of plot and depth of character which are missing from my effort here.”n

Pynchon would certainly remedy these deficiencies in “V.” itself, though I think his claim to have a bad ear is unduely harsh, and probably even inaccurate.



From "Weird Crews" and Gangs to the "Whole Sick Crew"

Pynchon is most critical of his first story, “The Small Rain” (1959). It features a company of army men of different levels of responsibility and intelligence. They’re based in Louisiana, when a nearby community is wiped out by a hurricane and they are charged with recovering the bodies of the dead. You could say that this is the beginning of the Pynchonesque collective concept of “the whole sick crew”, which would later feature in “V.”, as it does in later stories in this collection, like Dennis Flange and his “weird crew” in “Low-Lands” (1960) and Grover Snodd and his “gang” of delinquent boys in “The Secret Integration” (1964)

Integration into the Collective

The last of these stories concerns the integration of coloured people into society and school, while the army setting of “The Small Rain” arguably recognises the importance of the war to greater understanding of other races and creeds (Nathan ‘Lardass’ Levine, a graduate of CCNY, is described as ‘the Wandering Jew’).

(Mis-)Entropy

I had never previously read the story “Entropy” (1960), although I had suspected that its importance to Pynchon’s ouvre might have been exaggerated by academics and critics. The Introduction certainly provides plenty of fodder for this opinion. Pynchon responds to the story with a “bleakness of heart”, describing it as an example of a “procedural error…to begin with a theme, symbol or other abstract unifying agent, and then try to force characters and events to conform to it.”

The story itself is based on superficial notes Pynchon took from his reading of scientific texts, not some profound pre-existing knowledge (“Since I wrote this story I have kept trying to understand entropy, but my grasp becomes less sure the more I read”). Here is what Pynchon says in the story itself:

n  “‘Nevertheless,’ continued Callisto, ‘he [Willard Gibbs] found in entropy or the measure of disorganization for a closed system an adequate metaphor to apply to certain phenomena in his own world. He saw, for example, the younger generation responding to Madison Avenue with the same spleen his own had once reserved for Wall Street: and in American ‘consumerism’ discovered a similar tendency from the least to the most probable, from differentiation to sameness, from ordered individuality to a kind of chaos. He found himself, in short, restating [Willard] Gibbs’ prediction in social terms, and envisioned a heat-death for his culture in which ideas, like heat-energy would no longer be transferred, since each point in it would ultimately have the same quantity of energy; and intellectual motion would, accordingly, cease.”n

An Expansion of Possibilities

This quotation establishes a context of social science, rather than a wholesale adoption of information or systems theory.

It also echoes Pynchon’s comments in the Introduction about the position of his generation between Modernism and what would (or might) succeed it:

n  “We were encouraged from many directions - Kerouac and the Beat writers, the diction of Saul Bellow in ‘The Adventures of Augie March’, emerging voices like those of Herbert Gold and Philip Roth - to see how at least two very distinct kinds of English could be allowed to coexist. Allowed! It was actually OK to write like this! Who knew? The effect was exciting, liberating, strongly positive. It was not a case of either/or, but an expansion of possibilities. I don’t think we were consciously groping after any synthesis, although perhaps we should have been.
“The success of the ‘new left’ later in the ‘60’s was to be limited by the failure of college kids and blue-collar workers to get together politically. One reason was the presence of real, invisible class force fields in the way of communication between the two groups.”n  
n

Old Left Nuances

I’ve argued elsewhere that Pynchon’s support or sympathy for the Old Left surfaces in n  “Vineland”n and n  “Bleeding Edge”.n To focus exclusively and obsessively on Pynchon’s Post-Modernism and paranoia is to place him in a category within which he doesn’t always belong or sit comfortably, and to underestimate the nuances of his political concerns as an individual and an author.

It’s interesting in this context that Pynchon describes as “mighty influences” Edmund Wilson’s n  “To the Finland Station”n and Machiavelli’s “The Prince”.

It’s also worth highlighting that Pynchon sought “an expansion of possibilities” in contrast to John Barth’s “literature of exhaustion”. The answer was and is to be found in the writer’s individualism rather than their compliance with (by now tired Post-Modernist) proscriptions.

Borderline juvenilia. Introduction by author dismisses the collection ab initio as “illustrative of typical problems in entry-level fiction” (4). Explains that “when we speak of ‘seriousness’ in fiction ultimately we are talking about an attitude toward death” (5) which I regard as probably philistine. Nevertheless, author suggests “one of the reasons that fantasy and science fiction appeal so much to younger readers is that, when the space and time have been altered to allow characters to travel easily anywhere through the continuum and thus escape physical dangers and timepiece inevitabilities, mortality is so seldom an issue” (id.), which is definitely philistine. Introduction otherwise has thoughtful comments on entropy, author’s influences, and the nifty comment that his reading allowed “World War I in my imagination to assume the shape of that attractive nuisance so dear to adolescent minds, the apocalyptic showdown” (18).

Principal text is five short fictions, all generally haunted by the spectre of the Korean civil war (expressly at 44, 61, 172, and implicitly in the others, it seems)

First short is a military man down on the bayou. Second involves a dude whose wife kicks him out of the house. Third, “Entropy,” seems to be well-regarded, presents a soiree that host-protagonist wants to stop “from deteriorating into total chaos” (97). Fourth is fin de siecle espionage thriller of orientalist interest, but we should read it in the context of the cold war. It’s presented as asymptotic to World War I: “Britain wanted no part of France in the Nile Valley. M. Declasse, Foreign Minister of a newly formed French cabinet, would as soon go to war as not if there were any trouble when the two detachments met. As meet, everyone realized by now, they would. Kitchener had been instructed not to take any offensive and to avoid all provocation. Russia would support France in case of war, while England had a temporary rapprochement with Germany, which of course meant Italy and Austria as well” (106). But: “All he asked was that eventually there be a war. Not just a small incidental skirmish in the race to carve up Africa, but one pip-pip, jolly ho, up-goes-the-balloon Armageddon for Europe” (107). Finale of volume is the longest bit, involves a pack of rotters and race politics.

Recommended for readers in varying stages of abomination, persons in so much rapture over the mongrel gods of Egypt, and those who’d fled the eclipse then falling over Europe and their own hardly real shadow-states sometime back in the middle Thirties.

Especially ambivalent 4-star-Pynchon here. Intro, great, first two stories are fine, next two, unreadable, last one, The Secret Integration, both deceptively (which he isn’t usually, ie bashful — about being either of those things) surreal and political Stand By Me -esque story + rare instance of Pynchon offering a kind of key in the ending that kind of unlocks the whole rest of the story. Pretty great, made me want to give five stars until I remembered the garbage that preceded it. #ChickLit #SummerRead #NowBackToDeLillo

Oh, Thomas Pynchon! The only author who has fully convinced me of two polar opposite things at once: 1) that I am terribly stupid and 2) that he is terribly stupid.

I think the only reason you would want to read this compilation of short stories would be to study Pynchon's work further than you already have. This is not a good introductory book to read to understand Pynchon's writing. There are five stories in this novel, written from 1959 - 1964, from when he was in college at Cornell, to a couple of years after he graduated. Pynchon was quite skilled at this young age, though still had many faults, which, interestingly enough, he addresses in his introduction written decades later. His introduction, I think, is just as valuable as his short stories to readers who study Pynchon, because this is the only account which he has provided something of autobiographical detail -- which is unlike him, as he has always been a recluse.

"I now pretend to have reached a level of clarity about the young writer I was back then. I mean I can't very well just 86 this guy from my life. On the other hand, if through some as yet undeveloped technology I were to run into him today, how comfortable would I feel about lending him money, or for that matter, even stepping down the street to have a beer and talk over old times?"

He criticizes some of his shortcomings as a young writer, such as having a "bad ear", in that he wasn't experience in life enough to properly portray accents. He believes that the younger him treated and wrote about death in an unaffected, roundabout way, that should have instead have been more vivid and matter-of-fact. He also states that he was far too heavy handed in his use of allusions to other pieces of literature, especially works of Hemingway.

What you can appreciate through this book is his progression throughout his career as a writer. You can see that heavy-handedness in his earlier works, and slowly start to see it be more subtle in his novels. You can see his love for certain sentences structures growing, as you see more and more of them throughout the stories and novels. He is a good example to study if you want to see writing skills developing.

He also comments about his ignorant views as a young man, which are starkly apparent and even shocking in his earlier stories.

n  "Modern readers will be, at least, put off by an unacceptable level of racist, sexist, and proto-Fascist talk throughout this story. I wish I could say that this is only Pig Bodine's voice, but, sad to say, it was also my own at the time. The best that I can say for it now is that, for its time, it is probably authentic enough."n

I appreciate the candidness here, and the fact that he even chose to address it at all.

Perhaps, once you tackle The Crying of Lot 49 and then one of his larger ones, such as V. or Gravity's Rainbow, you can give this a try. But really, I wouldn't even recommend this then, if you read his books for plot and interesting writing, because he is a bore in this. He makes average sounding plots even more mundane with his writing.

Pynchon's interesting introduction was really good, but the stories themselves I didn't find that great. The pick of the bunch for me were The Small Rain and A Secret Integration. Obviously he was still finding his feet, before going on to become one the postmodern greats. Hope to read Mason & Dixon as my next Pynchon some time next year.

I love Pynchon. However, I think the greatest satisfaction I got from this story collection was two-fold:

1) the introduction, by the man himself! In a way, he lost a little of the glamorous sheen of anonymity he heretofore possessed, but otherwise, it was kind of thrilling to catch a glimpse of the man behind the curtain. It hasn't ruined the magic of any of his previous works, though being able to hold tenable the hypothesis that he is just as human as any other meatbag with a keyboard is exciting. It turns out he is neither demigod nor assemblage of monkeys at typewriters, so huzzah for that.

2) the quality of the stories. They're good, but I think that's where I want to leave it. I could call them "nice" or "pleasant." They aren't suffering from a significant shortage of wit or craft, but they fall well short of the standard to which I normally hold Pynchon. They are, in short, his early works. He was once a beginner.

Ha ha ha! Pynchon was once a novice!

If my downstairs neighbors start banging on the ceiling, it will be because they were disturbed by the buoyancy of my gleeful dancing about the fact that Pynchon did not spring fully-formed from a bust of the literary canon.

The man had a learning curve. Who knew? Neato.

All of Pynchon’s usual charm without the depth that you find in his novels. This is who lit studies thinks Pynchon is—those who don’t get or care for his unparalleled grasp of history, those who think Crying is about “chaos theory” or “information theory” instead of references to very real, still extant centuries old communications networks will find these stories indistinguishable in kind from his novels.

I was bracing myself for these to be crap, but they're not really. Sure, they don't really go anywhere much, especially the early few, and while they're certainly nowhere near the greatness of the novels they're still pretty well written. Better than anything I could muster, at least. Oh, and that introduction is very charming. This is certainly worth a read if you're a Pynchon fan.

Worth the price of admission on the strength of the introduction alone.

Good Ol' Ruggles. Perhaps only for Pynchon completionists. Certainly there's nothing here that isn't found in one of his brick books. Interesting to see Pynchon become himself over the course of the 5 or so years these were written. His first story "The Slow Rain" being his sloppiest - dragging its feet to nowhere. And "Entropy" annoyingly doing the "hey, I'm an artist. I know art." thing. The final two stories of the collection being the most freshly Pynchonian. Also includes a fantastic introduction where author Pynchon pokes holes in and tries to distance himself from these early stories as anyone would their bleak pubescent high-school poetry.

I got this several years ago when I was first introduced to Pynchon. Every once and a while I'd read parts of a story never really interested in continuing after a page or two. Really what I liked about this was his opening essay about his development as a writer. I finally sat down and reread the introduction and the story "Entropy" and thought I'd just let the book go. My original goal was to read some of Pynchons works before I tried my hand at GR, AtD or M&D. Well this book was forgotten under my bookshelf and quite frankly I'm not reading this as a morale boost before reading something I thought would be extremely intimidating. Slow learners really speaks to my growth as a reader. Someone thats more confident trying books that may be out of his comfort zone. I don't feel like I need it.

But thats completely beyond the point. This is a review of Slow Learners.... Slow learners is really for the dedicated. More interesting for seeing what Pynchon was like and how he felt rather than for the stories themselves. Just read his introduction online and spend the money on another one of his books

My first reaction, rereading these stories, was oh my God, accompanied by physical symptoms we shouldn't dwell upon.

This, from the opening paragraph of Thomas Pynchon's introduction to his earliest published stories, appears at first to be a self-conscious oversell of false modesty. Even after watching him pick apart the stories for the first 25 pages, one by one and with an assiduous efficiency, you still don't believe they are going to be bad. But then you read the first story, and you start to wonder if this hypothetical scenario of 1980s Pynchon meeting 1950s/60s Pynchon isn't, in fact, too generous:

...if through some as yet undeveloped technology I were to run into him today, how comfortable would I feel about lending him money, or for that matter even stepping down the street to have a beer and talk over old times?

Young Pynchon doesn't come off as a dick or even mostly unlikeable, but he doesn't come across as very interesting either. Or, perhaps most surprisingly, as very talented. And here's the silver lining: these stories firmly place the virtuosic talents Pynchon later developed into the realm of possibility for the modestly talented but ambitious would-be writer. Granted, all but one of these stories were written in college, but even so, any previously tempting apotheosis of the man will be permanently erased upon reading these. So that's the good news (I guess). But they aren't much fun to read, and I struggled to remain engaged through each one of them. I'm not going to go into detail about the problems here, mainly because Pynchon does such a damn good job of it in his introduction. It probably goes without saying, however, that any book that peaks with the introduction is in pretty serious trouble.