Slow Learner
Encyclopedia
Slow Learner is the 1984 published collection of six early novella
s 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.
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 college "friend" of the Flanges, named Pig Bodine
, shows up in a stolen MG to see his old friend. At this, Cindy orders the three men off the premises. They all get in Rocco's garbage truck, and head down to the dump, patrolled by an old man named Bolingbroke. There, Dennis waxes philosophical about the dump, thinking of it as an allegory for his life up to that point, and possibly his life in the future. Rocco leaves for home, and Bolingbroke, Bodine, and Dennis turn in for the night, swapping sea stories as they doze off. Then, in the middle of the night, Dennis hears a woman's voice calling "Anglo! Anglo with the golden hair!". Realizing this is him, Dennis runs off into the dump looking for the woman. Remembering that Bolingbroke said that gypsies were in the area, Dennis wonders if the woman he's looking for is a gypsy. Then he sees her. She is the most beautiful woman he's ever seen... and is also three feet tall. She takes him to her home, tunneling deep into the dump, where she asks him to marry her. He declines, saying he's already married. To this, she starts crying, thinking Dennis won't take her. He then thinks she looks like a child, and that he always wanted children, but Cindy was too busy. He then tells her he'll stay... for a while.
, Clausius' theorem, and Gibbs and Boltzmann, finally deciding that entropy
is an adequate metaphor to apply to American consumerist society, "a similar tendency from the least to the most probable, from differentiation to sameness, from ordered individuality to a kind of chaos."
Meanwhile Meatball juggles his attention between conversations about communication theory and personal relationships, keeping the musicians from smoking marijuana in his place, and the unexpected entrances of three coed philosophy majors lugging gallons of Chianti and, later, five sailors searching for a whorehouse. As the musicians discuss music theory, the girls and sailors chant drunken songs together, and childish chicanery break out all over, Meatball debates whether to hide in a closet until the party subsides its second wind or try to calm everyone down, one by one. He decides on the latter, patching up each out-of-control situation until the party tapers down to a din. Callisto's bird fails to improve under the unchanging conditions, which causes Aubade to smash out a window of the hothouse with her bare hands, displacing the constant temperature of inside and outside and leaving the story in a state of hovering uncertainty of where the next moment will lead.
. Their mission is to find out what their nemesis
, Moldweorp, is up to in the area. Porpentine theorizes his plan is to assassinate the Consul-General, and so they travel to Cairo
to intercept him, along with Goodfellow's new girlfriend, named Victoria Wren, her family, and a man named Bongo-Shaftsbury. During the trip, Bongo-Shaftsbury attempts to attack Victoria's younger sister Mildred, but Porpentine stops him. He then realizes that the man is a spy working for Moldweorp, and Bongo-Shaftsbury is put under guard. Upon reaching Cairo, the two men check into their hotels. The next morning, they head to the opera house where the Consul-General is a guest. Upon reaching their destination, they realize their hunch was correct, and Moldweorp and his spies are swarming the place. After Porpentine foils the assassination attempt, a chase across the streets of Cairo ensues. They reach the Sphinx
, and exit their cabs, running across the desert. Porpentine and Goodfellow catch Moldweorp, and they talk a moment. Porpentine tells Goodfellow to return to the cab. He does, and a shot rings out. Turning around, he sees his companion face-down in the hot desert sand, as Moldweorp walks away. Sixteen years later, Goodfellow surveys a motorcade containing Archduke Franz Ferdinand, upon hearing rumors of a possible assassination. He's joined by his new girlfriend, a barmaid this time, who thinks of him as just a simple-minded Englishman, no good in bed but liberal with his money.
, and Hogan Slothrop, neighborhood kids from Mingeborough, New York, meet up at Grover's house one Saturday afternoon to discuss activities for the weekend. Their "Inner Junta
" talk about planning elaborate practical jokes, collecting milk money from schoolkids. The meeting adjourns and the five of them depart, through a lush section of forest they dub King Yjro's Woods, then down a stream aboard a refurbished flat-bottomed boat they christened the S.S. Leak, to an abandoned manor known as "The Big House". Here they solidify plans to infiltrate and disrupt a PTA
meeting with smoke bombs and sodium/water explosions when Hogan, an 8-year-old AA
member, gets a call to sit with another member who is alone and afraid. He and Tim abandon the group and go to the hotel where Mr. Carl McAfee, a Negro
musician from Mississippi, was staying. 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 Negro, 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.
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
s by the American novelist Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...
, 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.
- "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 Review 22, 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 19–26, 1964 in The Saturday Evening PostThe Saturday Evening PostThe Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
235, pp. 36–37, 39, 42-44, 46-49, 51.
"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 lawyerLawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
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
Wine
Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...
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 college "friend" of the Flanges, named Pig Bodine
Pig Bodine
Seaman "Pig" Bodine is a fictional character appearing in many novels written by Thomas Pynchon. Bodine appears in V. , and recurs in Gravity's Rainbow . Characters named Bodine also appear in Mason & Dixon and Against the Day . He also occurs in the short-story "Low-lands"...
, shows up in a stolen MG to see his old friend. At this, Cindy orders the three men off the premises. They all get in Rocco's garbage truck, and head down to the dump, patrolled by an old man named Bolingbroke. There, Dennis waxes philosophical about the dump, thinking of it as an allegory for his life up to that point, and possibly his life in the future. Rocco leaves for home, and Bolingbroke, Bodine, and Dennis turn in for the night, swapping sea stories as they doze off. Then, in the middle of the night, Dennis hears a woman's voice calling "Anglo! Anglo with the golden hair!". Realizing this is him, Dennis runs off into the dump looking for the woman. Remembering that Bolingbroke said that gypsies were in the area, Dennis wonders if the woman he's looking for is a gypsy. Then he sees her. She is the most beautiful woman he's ever seen... and is also three feet tall. She takes him to her home, tunneling deep into the dump, where she asks him to marry her. He declines, saying he's already married. To this, she starts crying, thinking Dennis won't take her. He then thinks she looks like a child, and that he always wanted children, but Cindy was too busy. He then tells her he'll stay... for a while.
"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 in a constantly 37° Fahrenheit room. Callisto pontificates on the discoveries of the Laws of ThermodynamicsLaws of thermodynamics
The four laws of thermodynamics summarize its most important facts. They define fundamental physical quantities, such as temperature, energy, and entropy, in order to describe thermodynamic systems. They also describe the transfer of energy as heat and work in thermodynamic processes...
, Clausius' theorem, and Gibbs and Boltzmann, finally deciding that entropy
Entropy
Entropy is a thermodynamic property that can be used to determine the energy available for useful work in a thermodynamic process, such as in energy conversion devices, engines, or machines. Such devices can only be driven by convertible energy, and have a theoretical maximum efficiency when...
is an adequate metaphor to apply to American consumerist society, "a similar tendency from the least to the most probable, from differentiation to sameness, from ordered individuality to a kind of chaos."
Meanwhile Meatball juggles his attention between conversations about communication theory and personal relationships, keeping the musicians from smoking marijuana in his place, and the unexpected entrances of three coed philosophy majors lugging gallons of Chianti and, later, five sailors searching for a whorehouse. As the musicians discuss music theory, the girls and sailors chant drunken songs together, and childish chicanery break out all over, Meatball debates whether to hide in a closet until the party subsides its second wind or try to calm everyone down, one by one. He decides on the latter, patching up each out-of-control situation until the party tapers down to a din. Callisto's bird fails to improve under the unchanging conditions, which causes Aubade to smash out a window of the hothouse with her bare hands, displacing the constant temperature of inside and outside and leaving the story in a state of hovering uncertainty of where the next moment will lead.
"Under the Rose"
Two English spies, named Porpentine and Goodfellow, are sitting in a cafe in Upper EgyptEgypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
. Their mission is to find out what their nemesis
Archenemy
An archenemy, archfoe, archvillain or archnemesis is the principal enemy of a character in a work of fiction, often described as the hero's worst enemy .- Etymology :The word archenemy or arch-enemy originated...
, Moldweorp, is up to in the area. Porpentine theorizes his plan is to assassinate the Consul-General, and so they travel to Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
to intercept him, along with Goodfellow's new girlfriend, named Victoria Wren, her family, and a man named Bongo-Shaftsbury. During the trip, Bongo-Shaftsbury attempts to attack Victoria's younger sister Mildred, but Porpentine stops him. He then realizes that the man is a spy working for Moldweorp, and Bongo-Shaftsbury is put under guard. Upon reaching Cairo, the two men check into their hotels. The next morning, they head to the opera house where the Consul-General is a guest. Upon reaching their destination, they realize their hunch was correct, and Moldweorp and his spies are swarming the place. After Porpentine foils the assassination attempt, a chase across the streets of Cairo ensues. They reach the Sphinx
Sphinx
A sphinx is a mythical creature with a lion's body and a human head or a cat head.The sphinx, in Greek tradition, has the haunches of a lion, the wings of a great bird, and the face of a woman. She is mythicised as treacherous and merciless...
, and exit their cabs, running across the desert. Porpentine and Goodfellow catch Moldweorp, and they talk a moment. Porpentine tells Goodfellow to return to the cab. He does, and a shot rings out. Turning around, he sees his companion face-down in the hot desert sand, as Moldweorp walks away. Sixteen years later, Goodfellow surveys a motorcade containing Archduke Franz Ferdinand, upon hearing rumors of a possible assassination. He's joined by his new girlfriend, a barmaid this time, who thinks of him as just a simple-minded Englishman, no good in bed but liberal with his money.
"The Secret Integration"
Grover Snodd and his friends Tim Santora, Carl Barrington, Etienne CherdluETAOIN SHRDLU
ETAOIN SHRDLU is a nonsense phrase that sometimes appeared in print in the days of "hot type" publishing because of a custom of Linotype machine operators. It appeared frequently enough that it became part of the lore of newspapers...
, and Hogan Slothrop, neighborhood kids from Mingeborough, New York, meet up at Grover's house one Saturday afternoon to discuss activities for the weekend. Their "Inner Junta
Military junta
A junta or military junta is a government led by a committee of military leaders. The term derives from the Spanish language junta meaning committee, specifically a board of directors...
" talk about planning elaborate practical jokes, collecting milk money from schoolkids. The meeting adjourns and the five of them depart, through a lush section of forest they dub King Yjro's Woods, then down a stream aboard a refurbished flat-bottomed boat they christened the S.S. Leak, to an abandoned manor known as "The Big House". Here they solidify plans to infiltrate and disrupt a PTA
Parent-Teacher Association
In the U.S. a parent-teacher association or Parent-Teacher-Student Association is a formal organization composed of parents, teachers and staff that is intended to facilitate parental participation in a public or private school. Most public and private K-8 schools in the U.S. have a PTA, a...
meeting with smoke bombs and sodium/water explosions when Hogan, an 8-year-old AA
Alcoholics Anonymous
Alcoholics Anonymous is an international mutual aid movement which says its "primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety." Now claiming more than 2 million members, AA was founded in 1935 by Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith in Akron, Ohio...
member, gets a call to sit with another member who is alone and afraid. He and Tim abandon the group and go to the hotel where Mr. Carl McAfee, a Negro
Negro
The word Negro is used in the English-speaking world to refer to a person of black ancestry or appearance, whether of African descent or not...
musician from Mississippi, was staying. 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
Vagrancy (people)
A vagrant is a person in poverty, who wanders from place to place without a home or regular employment or income.-Definition:A vagrant is "a person without a settled home or regular work who wanders from place to place and lives by begging;" vagrancy is the condition of such persons.-History:In...
, 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 Negro, 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
- BaedekerBaedekerVerlag Karl Baedeker is a Germany-based publisher and pioneer in the business of worldwide travel guides. The guides, often referred as simply "Baedekers" , contain important introductions, descriptions of buildings, of museum collections, etc., written by the best specialists, and...
's guide to Egypt for 1899 - John Buchan's spy fiction
- Edmund Wilson's To the Finland StationTo the Finland StationTo the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History is a book by American critic and historian Edmund Wilson. The work presents the history of revolutionary thought and the birth of socialism, from the French Revolution through the collaboration of Marx and Engels to the arrival...
- Machiavelli's The PrinceThe PrinceThe Prince is a political treatise by the Italian diplomat, historian and political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli. From correspondence a version appears to have been distributed in 1513, using a Latin title, De Principatibus . But the printed version was not published until 1532, five years after...
- John le CarréJohn le CarréDavid John Moore Cornwell , who writes under the name John le Carré, is an author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and the 1960s, Cornwell worked for MI5 and MI6, and began writing novels under the pseudonym "John le Carré"...
- SurrealismSurrealismSurrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
- Regional guide to the The Berkshire Hills (1939), American Guide SeriesAmerican Guide SeriesThe American Guide Series was a group of books and pamphlets published under the auspices of the Federal Writers' Project , a Depression-era works program in the United States. The American Guide Series books were compiled by the FWP, but printed by individual states, and contained detailed...
, Federal Writers' ProjectFederal Writers' ProjectThe Federal Writers' Project was a United States federal government project to fund written work and support writers during the Great Depression. It was part of the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal program...