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Read Slow Learner: Early Stories (1995)

Slow Learner: Early Stories (1995)

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Rating
3.47 of 5 Votes: 4
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ISBN
0099532514 (ISBN13: 9780099532514)
Language
English
Publisher
vintage classics

Slow Learner: Early Stories (1995) - Plot & Excerpts

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.

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.

What do You think about Slow Learner: Early Stories (1995)?

Very interesting stuff. I'm a bit surprised Pynchon even published this; one would think that if he were really as embarrassed as he professes to be in the preface, that he wouldn't collect them--perhaps (perhaps!) this modesty is false?As for the stories, they are very rough and I found myself getting distracted and falling asleep while reading them. They required a real force of will to finish them, something I didn't have on most attempts. There are, however, flashes of brilliance scattered throughout, and Pynchon's bizarre personality is in every word. I was really blown away by the ending to the first story (p. 47-51), written while Pynchon was in college and published in the Cornell undergraduate journal. It's the best part of the collection, I think, other than the preface. I can't imagine having written this well in college--I most certainly did not."Lowlands" also is hilarious and highly enjoyable. Imagine getting tossed out by your wife and meeting the perfect woman...except she's a midget gypsy at the trash dump. She's perfect, albeit to scale. Lots of laughs."Entropy" is very good, and contains in it two spots where genius shines through--p.83 and p.90-91. "Under the Rose" is almost unreadable. I felt a little embarrassed too, reading it, as it reminded me of some of my own tough-guy type stories from the past. Ick.Only pick this up if you are hardcore--that is, have no life. It's not an enjoyable read you can take to the beach. It's frustrating, rough, and requires some love and work. But it does show how far ahead Pynchon was of every other young scribbler despite it all; I can only envy him.
—§--

Lisa gave me this collection of short stories for my birthday a few years ago. I feel badly that it took me so long to get around to reading it, but it just didn't look like it'd be my sort of thing. It kind of wasn't. I've never read any Pynchon before. These were his early stories, all published in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They felt... thicker... than the sorts of stories I usually read. I did like the bit of a flair of fantasy that runs through a few of the otherwise perfectly ordinary stories--the beautiful midget gypsy girl who lives in the tunnels under the garbage dump, the new boy in town who turns out to be a little different. The book includes an introduction by Pynchon where he discusses the stories, his influences, the flaws he sees in the stories, and what he likes about them anyway. I probably shouldn't have read that first but I can never resist. I'm sure that colored my reading a bit--there were places where I thought, oh yes that is clunky just like Mr. Pynchon said, when otherwise I might have just read on through and not noticed it. The dialogue really is a bit clunky in places and I would have caught that, I'm sure. Some of the stories didn't really feel structured in a way--I guess I feel that, when I get to the end of a story, I want to be surprised and not surprised at the same time, because the ending should be natural and in a sense inevitable, but should also have something of the unexpected. These stories didn't seem so much to be building towards their endings as to be some pages about some guys who we start reading about and they go and do some things and then they stop. Not that the stories were uninteresting or unplotted, just not necessarily structured in a way I enjoy.The exception was the last story in the book, "The Secret Integration", which was terrific and was worth reading the whole book to get to. (Mr. Pynchon says in the introduction that he's pretty content with how this story holds up, but that the next thing he wrote after this story was The Crying of Lot 49 "in which I seem to have forgotten most of what I thought I'd learned up till then". This is not an overwhelming argument for me to go pick up The Crying of Lot 49.)Overall: Props to Mr. Pynchon for a really entertaining and candid introduction, and also for one excellent story--one of our five definitely isn't bad. I'll say three stars.
—Roxanne

Only actually good story the last one ("Secret Integration"). I actually got this because I wanted to see if I got Pynchon early enough whether I could understand him. Have decided it really doesn't matter. His stuff all sounds the same: plodding, pointless and dull. Like so much of that fatuous picaresque '60's crap. Not helped any either by a smirking, posturing intro--wherein he criticizes himself for all sorts of inane trivial egghead reasons. And how can somebody who gets their stuff published in college come off as a slow learner? Unless he's trying to say he's really an even bigger genius than we already give him credit for...what insincerity. And he talks about incorporating the vernacular, but then he turns out to be just another fussy, pedantic stiff.
—TrumanCoyote

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