Slow Learner
LC Class PS3566.Y55 S5 1984 | | |
Preceded by | Gravity's Rainbow | |
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Followed by | Vineland |
Slow Learner is the 1984 published collection of five early short stories by the American novelist Thomas Pynchon, originally published in various sources between 1959 and 1964.
The book is also notable for its introduction, written by Pynchon. His comments on the stories after reading them again for the first time in many years, and his recollection of the events surrounding their creation, amount to the author's only autobiographical comments to his readers.
Content
- Introduction
- "The Small Rain" – First published in March 1959 in the Cornell Writer, No. 2, pp. 14–32.
- "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna" (available only in some editions) – First published in Epoch (Cornell University), Spring 1959, Vol IX, No. 4, pp. 195–213.
- The story takes its title from Measure for Measure Act I Scene 1 Line 44.
- "Low-lands" – First published in New World Writing, No. 16, Philadelphia: Lippincott, on 16 March 1960, pp. 85–108.
- "Entropy" – First published in the Kenyon Review22, No. 2, in Spring 1960, pp. 27–92.
- "Under the Rose" – First published in The Noble Savage 3 in May 1961, pp. 233–251.
- "The Secret Integration" – First published December 26, 1964 in The Saturday Evening Post 237 No. 45, pp. 36–37, 39, 42–44, 46–49, 51.
Synopsis
"The Small Rain"
This was Pynchon's first published story. It centers around Nathan Levine, a lazy Specialist 3/C in the Army stationed at New Orleans who, along with several of his companions in the battalion are assigned to help with the cleanup at a small island named Creole, which has just been hit by a hurricane. He picks up dead bodies back at the island and after the horrific day of work, he heads back thinking about how to go forward with his life, if at all.
"Low-lands"
Dennis Flange, a lawyer at Wasp and Winsome, Attorneys at Law, calls into the office, telling them he's not coming in. What he's going to do instead is sit at home and drink wine with the neighborhood garbage man, Rocco Squarcione. As they sit and talk, Dennis's wife, Cindy, comes home and is noticeably frustrated by Dennis's afternoon activities. To make matters worse, an old rowdy Navy "friend" of the Flanges, named
"Entropy"
A weekend-long lease-breaking party devolves into disarray as Meatball Mulligan entertains a revolving door of cronies, servicemen, and jazz musicians while, in a hothouse room, Callisto and his lover Aubade ponder the everpresent condition of enclosed systems creating disorder while trying to nurse a baby bird back to health. The temperature outside remains 37 degrees Fahrenheit throughout the day, fueling apocalyptic paranoia in Callisto, who pontificates on the discoveries of the
"Under the Rose"
Two English spies, named Porpentine and Goodfellow, are sitting in a cafe in Upper
"The Secret Integration"
Grover Snodd and his friends Tim Santora, Carl Barrington,
Here they solidify plans to infiltrate and disrupt a
Mr. McAfee eyes the situation with the kids and, chalking it up to a bad joke, sends them away and calls room service for a fifth of whiskey. Hogan steadfastly claims his seriousness and the kids stay to keep him company. After failing to shoo them away, Grover calls the hotel and asks to show up with Etienne. McAfee can't afford to pay for the bottle of whiskey, much less the room he's staying in, and breaks down into screaming and crying in his bed, passing out in-between fits. The police are called in to escort Mr. McAfee out as a vagrant, despite protests from the kids and Hogan's insistence that the man is sick, not a criminal. The timeline gets flipped here and, after the Junta had successfully completed a few of their practical jokes, talk about Carl Barrington's family moving into the neighborhood had taken over the parents.
In response to the word "integration" being thrown around, Grover, the boy genius, offers the calculus definition. Later it is realized that the parents were discussing the other meaning for "integration", white and black kids in the same schools, was what was really meant. Carl's family, who is black, is a sort of trigger for the gentrification of the area, an easy target, an explanation for the racist remarks made by Tim's mother and reflected around the neighborhood, and gives light to the mockery of Hogan's dispatch to Mr. McAfee's aid.
Carl, although accepted by the boys as a legitimate member of the Junta, could only be related to by grownups as an "imaginary playmate", someone who is talked about and reflected through safe White suburban eyes, then left to harmlessly evaporate at day's end.
See also
- John Buchan
- John le Carré
- The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
- Surrealism
- To the Finland Station by Edmund Wilson