Pynchon Works: Short Stories

Slow Learner is a collection of five short stories written between 1958 and 1964 and prefaced with a lengthy introduction by Thomas Pynchon himself. Often considered an “apprentice work,” the stories clearly show the development of his characteristic style, and more than a few touch upon subjects that would become major themes throughout the rest of his work: interaction between social classes, conflict with authority, tension between the sexes, and understanding the nature of entropy.

Based on Pynchon’s introduction, one may get the impression that no greater sins were ever committed in the world of literature than his early stories. Pynchon pulls no punches in his analysis of his earlier work, and he takes an almost malicious pleasure in dissecting each one under the uncompromising glare of his maturity. As Pynchon himself would have it, each story is apparently useful only in tracing his development as a writer, and the primary value of the collection is merely instructional, a document of exercises in flawed technique—hence its sardonic title. Don’t, however, allow Pynchon’s harsh self-criticism dissuade you from reading them. As Edward Mendelson states in the cover blurb, “the apprentice work of a major novelist makes better reading than the mature productions of a dozen minor ones.” Pynchon’s spate of self-criticism serves as something of a public confession, a canny act of contrition that allows him to present these stories free from the pangs of guilt. Some are, after all, quite good.

The first story, “The Small Rain,” (Cornell Writer, 1958) is loosely based on a real incident in Louisiana, where the Army was called out to assist in the cleanup of a hurricane. It tells the tale of one Lardass Levine, an intellectual slacker serving his time in the Army and caught in a transitional phase about “where to put his loyalties.” Although Pynchon states that “most of what I dislike about my writing is present here in embryo, as well as in more advanced forms,” it’s likewise true that there’s much present here in embryo of what is good about Pynchon’s writing. Even in this, his first published story, one can recognize a theme that would become one of Pynchon’s major leitmotifs—sympathy with “preterite,” the common mass of humanity, whom “while in theory capable of idiocy, are much more apt to display competence, courage, humanity, wisdom, and other virtues associated, by the educated classes, with themselves.” It also somewhat dutifully punches the literary clock on the sex and death issues, both of which hover constantly in the background, working their slow changes on Levine.
The second story is “Low-lands,” (New World Writing 1960) which centers on Dennis Flange, an aging sailor who has resolved himself to attempt a certain level of domesticity on land. Unfortunately, his intimate relationship to the sea has deeply mystical reverberations in both his heart and soul; it has also grafted itself to an erotic matrix that has more substance in adolescent fantasy than in reality. His attempt to reconcile a landlubbing life, which includes a relationship with a mature woman, with his sense of loss is a source of tension that finds a most interesting resolution. This story—which Pynchon calls the product of  “a smart-assed jerk who didn’t know any better”—is among the strongest in the collection. There are some beautiful passages that anticipate the command of imagery displayed in Gravity’s Rainbow, and it also introduces us to the semi-mythical Pig Bodine, the archetypical drunken sailor and jolly miscreant who would later strike up unique friendships with Benny Profane of V., as well as Tyrone Slothrop and Roger Mexico of Gravity’s Rainbow.

The third piece, “Entropy,” (Kenyon Review 1960) is Pynchon’s most widely anthologized story, and the one for which he reserves his harshest criticism. It’s a highly conceptual story that uses the theme of entropy to frame the parallel stories of Meatball Mulligan and Callisto, two very different men who live in the same apartment building. Callisto is something of a recluse, having exiled himself to a self-created artificial environment which serves as a virtual prison. He’s obsessed with the idea of entropy as a philosophical metaphor for a “heat death” of culture. Having seen two world wars, he has seemingly internalized the Laws of Thermodynamics, and as a result has a generally gloomy “world weary Middle-European” disposition. Directly below him, however, a microcosm for entropy plays itself out as Meatball’s “lease-breaking” party drunkenly unwinds itself into its third consecutive day. The discussions of the partygoers unknowingly mirror the different meanings and ramifications of entropy as they themselves progress to a more chaotic state. The story follows both systems, above and below, as they each approach a crisis point that demands a thermodynamic resolution. Though the ending may be a touch melodramatic, it is nevertheless a fine story.

The forth story is “Under the Rose,” (The Noble Savage, 1961) and is notable as being the first time Pynchon employed a Baedeker’s guide as a fetish for invoking the Muse. Set at the end of the Nineteenth century, the story follows a pair English spies, Porpentine and Goodfellow, and their intrigues in Cairo. The atmosphere is ripe with a Victorian sense of adventure, and the characters exist in a universe where the “apocalyptic showdown” looming on the horizon is more likely to be determined by the actions of individual personalities—cloak and dagger stuff—than by the “statistical” decisions of nations. Pynchon declares that he is “less annoyed” with this story, and he resurrected and reconstructed it as one of the chapters in his first novel, V. It’s also easy to see Porpentine and Goodfellow as the spiritual ancestors of Steeply and Marathe, the dueling spies from David Foster Wallace’s Pynchonian masterpiece, Infinite Jest.

First appearing in the Spring 1959 edition of Cornell’s Epoch, this is Pynchon’s second published short story.

Pynchon Works:
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