Slow Learner

by Thomas Pynchon

Long before Thomas Pynchon published his famous novel V. and radically changed the shape of literature in our century, he was writing stories—inventive, wonderfully imagined short fiction that startled and delighted readers fortunate enough to find them among the pages of Kenyon Review or The Noble Savage. Now, for the first time, five of these stories have been collected in book form, as Slow Learner. "The Small Rain," "Low-Lands," "Entropy," "Under the Small Rain," and The Secret Integration," all written between 1958 and 1964, appear here together with Pynchon's own very candid and surprisingly personal introduction. In it Pynchon reveals how he came to write each work and how he now views the young author he was then, making this volume more than a collection of stories, but a rare and fascinating self-portrait of an intensely private man.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Literature, American, 20th Century, The United States Of America, Contemporary

240 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and nonfiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes, including history, music, science, and mathematics. For Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon won the 1973 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.

Hailing from Long Island, Pynchon served two years in the United States Navy and earned an English degree from Cornell University. After publishing several short stories in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he began composing the novels for which he is best known: V. (1963), The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), and Gravity's Rainbow (1973). Rumors of a historical novel about Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon had circulated as early as the 1980s; the novel, Mason & Dixon, was published in 1997 to critical acclaim. His 2009 novel Inherent Vice was adapted into a feature film by Paul Thomas Anderson in 2014. Pynchon is notoriously reclusive from the media; few photographs of him have been published, and rumors about his location and identity have circulated since the 1960s. Pynchon's most recent novel, Bleeding Edge, was published on September 17, 2013.

Reviews

[Mattia Ravasi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Video-review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gURP2...
Featured in my Top 20 Books I Read in 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X6OQ...

Worth its price for the introduction alone, the five stories in Slow Learner show a writer trying his hand at different things. Paradoxically enough, the least Pynchonian stories in the collection (1st and 5th) are also the most effective if you ask me, but even in the less elegant middle stories one can find sparks of true genius. Must read.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 3 out of 5]

While not essential to the Pynchon canon, these stories provide insight into how Pynchon started created his stories and his universes. We even get to see a few characters that appear in Gravity's Rainbow and Against the Day later on. I would say this is for the Pynchon-addicts like myself who are waiting impatiently for yet another Pynchon masterpiece.

Fino's Pynchon Reviews:
: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
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[Martin Iguaran · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este es el primer libro que leo de Thomas Pynchon. Sabía más sobre su reputación de ermitaño elusivo, que jamás asiste a eventos ni deja que le tomen fotografías, que sobre su literatura. Pero no quería dejar de leerlo.
Este libro contiene cinco relatos de la juventud del autor: fueron escritos cuando tenía entre 21 y 27 años. Me sorprendieron gratamente ya que si bien no son perfectos (¿Es justo demandar perfección a un escritor de 21 años?) son maduros y algunos de hecho, excelentes. He decidido puntuar cada relato individualmente y la nota del libro será el promedio de esos puntajes. No es un sistema perfecto, pero no tengo otro que refleje mejor el libro. El primer relato, "Lluvia ligera", merece cinco estrellas en mi opinión. Es un excelente retrato de la vida en el ejército. El segundo "Tierras bajas", también, cinco estrellas. Son el tercero y el cuarto donde en mi opinión baja un poco la calidad. Les asigno respectivamente tres y dos estrellas. El cuarto, "Bajo la rosa", recibe dos estrellas porque en mi caso, encontré la trama incomprensible. Pero el libro remonta hacia el final con "La integración secreta": un grupo de chicos se reúne a escondidas para planear bromas pesadas y compartir sus críticas e impresiones sobre los adultos. El tema del racismo y la integración de Afro-americanos con los blancos está presente en todo el relato. Me parece que forma parte de las excelentes historias de niños, la realidad del mundo que los rodea, y la pérdida de la inocencia. Cinco estrellas.

[Ian Scuffling · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one is definitely for the die-hards and completionists, Slow Learner: Early Stories is probably most intriguing to Pynchonites merely for the introductory material where we learn a lot about Pynchon's fictioneer-ing process (and progress) from the man himself. When the intro opens with the author warning of the "juvenalia" that lurks in the stories in the collection, he's kind of put himself into a defensive position. Sometimes this is a rhetorical move, but in Pynchon's case, turns out that there's fair reason for the reader to be warned. At least 3 of these stories are mediocre, one is good, and the other is clearly superior.

Even the better stories here offer only the slimmest glimmer of Pynchon's heights across all of his fictions. So the real value here for the Pynchonite is to see the progress of a genius in growth. There's a reassuring thing to see The Master struggling with mediocre short stories early in his career, as if to remind you that greatness can be a process. That said, I think most fans of Pynchon would best be served reading Slow Learner last, as I have. With a view of the full breadth of all of his work, it's really a good way to learn how he arrived with books like Gravity's Rainbow and even Inherent Vice (with the kind of surreal spy/detective story in "Under the Rose").

There is no more new Pynchon for me. This is profoundly sad. Re-reading Pynchon is always a delight, but if Mr. Paranoid's listening, throw us a bone, man!

[Ian "Marvin" Graye · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 (“V.”).

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:

“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.”

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:

“‘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.”

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:

“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.”

Old Left Nuances

I’ve argued elsewhere that Pynchon’s support or sympathy for the Old Left surfaces in “Vineland” and “Bleeding Edge”. 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 “To the Finland Station” 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.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶]

Even Pynchon's juvenilia rises above a lot of today's so-called 'literary fiction'. Yet, it's clear that these stories were just warm-ups for the novels to come, his vision being too expansive for containment within the short format. As noted in other reviews, TP's introduction makes the collection worthwhile.

('The Secret Integration' made me think of The Goonies.)

[Oscar · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘Un lento aprendizaje’ recoge los primeros relatos de Thomas Pynchon, que escribió entre 1958 y 1964, y en ellos se aprecia esa esencia pynchoniana tan típica. Ya en la larga introducción, Pynchon nos comenta los errores que contienen estos cuentos, típicos en un autor nobel, y de su manía a la hora de documentarse con la lectura de otros libros antes que con la experiencia. En esta introducción, Pynchon también nos habla de las tramas y sus personajes, del humor inherente en ambos, del germen de sus diálogos, que con el tiempo se convertirán en brillantes. Una diferencia entres estos primeros relatos y otras obras posteriores es la inmadurez de ciertas situaciones, pecados de juventud del autor por otra parte.

Pynchon es claramente reconocible en estos relatos. Si bien empiezan con un estilo iniciático, en un entorno humorístico, según van avanzando el estilo va perfeccionándose y haciéndose más propio de su manera de escribir. En ‘Lluvia ligera’ aparece el ejército y soldados que están casi siempre de broma; ’Bajo la rosa’ es una historia de espionaje que recuerda sobre todo a ciertos pasajes de su novela ‘V.’; en 'Entropía' se alude a las leyes de la termodinámica; ’Tierras bajas’ es una anécdota puramente pynchoniana, donde Dennis Flange acabará de la manera más surrealista; y ’La integración secreta’ (mis favoritos este y ‘Bajo la rosa’) recoge el afán de un grupo de jóvenes por conspirar contra los adultos, su pueblo y el orden establecido, donde brilla con luz propia el personaje de Grover.

Los cinco relatos recogidos en ‘Un lento aprendizaje’ van mucho más allá que las meras anécdotas, la ironía y los chispeantes diálogos. En ellos, Pynchon intenta incluir sus opiniones, encuadrando a sus personajes en un entorno claramente institucionalizado donde buscan un objetivo y, sobre todo, la libertad como individuos.

Sin duda, vale la pena leer estos primeros cuentos del genial Thomas Pynchon, que junto a ‘La subasta del lote 49’ son sus libros más asequibles.

[Bram · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.

[Markus]

Meinen ersten Pynchon, "Die Enden der Parabel", las ich Anfang der 80er und ich war völlig von den Socken. Es war die Entdeckung eines völlig neuen literarischen Universums, die als logische Fortsetzung von Burroughs, Kerouac & Co genau mein Ding war. Es folgten weitere Pynchons, William Gaddis, Don deLillo, John Barth, Gilbert Sorrentino, später dann John Hawkes, die ganze amerikanische Postmoderne. Pynchon blieb aber immer mein Favorit.

"Spätzünder" besteht aus fünf Erzählungen, seinen ersten literarischen Versuchen, die er in seiner Studienzeit verfasst hat. Allzu viel habe ich mir davon nicht erwartet und da ich sonst schon alles gelesen habe, ging es mir eher darum, meine Pynchonsammlung zu komplettieren.

In Anbetracht des damals zarten Alters des Autors hat mich vor allem die Intensität der Erzählungen überrascht, wenn auch vieles noch ungar klingt. Es sind aber schon waschechte Pynchons und sein unglaubliches Talent ist offensichtlich. Wer seine späteren Romane gelesen hat, erkennt deutlich, wie sich die Merkmale seines typischen Stils bereits abzeichnen.

Besonders interessant ist das Vorwort, das der Autor 1985 selbst geschrieben hat. Es war das erste Mal, dass er zu seinem Werk selbst Stellung nahm, hat er doch die Barthes'sche These vom Tod des Autors wie kein anderer zelebriert. Hier nimmt er seine eigene Schreibe nicht ohne Koketterie auseinander und lässt eigentlich kein gutes Haar an seinen Jugendsünden. Es geht dabei auch um Dinge, die mir selbst gar nie aufgefallen wären. Und man bekommt nebenbei auch einen schönen Einblick in die Schreibküche des Autors.

Gelesen haben muss man das nicht, aber für mich als ausgemachten Liebhaber war es bereichernd und besser als erwartet; jetzt freue ich mich richtig auf "Shadow Ticket", das im Oktober erscheinen wird.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Introduction: It's so strange reading Pynchon as Pynchon, directly addressing the reader. Because there are no interviews, no letters, no photographs even, he's become to me a mythic figure, something rather than somebody. But in this introduction (which really should be read as an afterword, if you're spoiler-phobic), he writes pretty casually and frankly about his early days as a writer. And he's not a fan of his juvenilia, which he makes abundantly clear as he dissects each story, pointing out his embarrassment over his "tin ear" for dialogue or the faux pas of originating a story from a theme, rather than letting the theme and story arise naturally from its characters. Seeing how self-critical he is over these stories, it makes me surprised and thankful that we have this collection at all. Maybe he was running a bit low on funds and needed a quick payday, which is absolutely fine with me.

The Small Rain: I never would have guessed this was written by Pynchon. It feels more like a Hemingway/Heller/Kerouac hybrid. Interesting by virtue of its dissimilarity, but not something I particular enjoyed or will remember much about. Two stars

Low-lands: This, on the other hand, feels very much like Pynchon, like it could have been lifted straight out of V. It contains at least one great character and one really strange but awesome set-piece. As Pynchon himself says, it's more of a character study than a story, but I'd say it's a really nice character study. Four stars. 

Entropy: I read all the words and knew most of them, but put all together the way they were, I really have no idea what this was. And there wasn’t enough fun or interesting to make me care enough to figure it out. Two stars. 

Under the Rose: Fits right in with V. In fact, I read almost the whole story before realizing I was reading about characters and events that also appear in V. (Pynchon rewrote this story into a chapter of his first novel.) At times it becomes too convoluted, but it's mostly an enjoyable spy story inhabited by strange/pitiful/goofy/terrifying characters. Three stars.

The Secret Integration: Stands a bit apart from the rest of Pynchon's work; there are no tedious, paranoid ramblings or cartoonish chase scenes or fuzzy dream sequences. This is a relatively straightforward story of kids dealing with the civil rights era and their parents who are stuck in the past. It's one of the best things I've read by Pynchon, which raises the question: do I like Pynchon best when he's being the most un-Pynchonesque? Five stars.

[E. G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Introduction, by Thomas Pynchon

--The Small Rain
--Low-lands
--Entropy
--Under the Rose
--The Secret Integration

Publisher & Date of Publication

[TheBookWarren · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.50 Stars — Early Pynchon is still very good, even if it’s not Pynchon!!!

A solid collection of eclectic tales of human foibles and relationships, I really enjoyed each individual story in its own right, which is rare in such collections.

The clues of the master-author-to-be are definitely present, the prose shown here seems to stagger rather than expand, TP was trying things on and seeing what most fit.

I particularly enjoyed the passive stylings shown through the later stories and felt as though there was perhaps room for 1-2 more as I was left feeling a little hungry.

[Torsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Diese Kurzgeschichtensammlung von Thomas Pynchon ist vielleicht nicht unbedingt essentiell für den Pynchon-Profi - mir hat sie sehr gut gefallen. Sehr interessant ist die vom Autor selbst verfasste Einführung, in der er Gedanken über sein Frühwerk äußert, die einen Einblick in den Schreibprozess am Anfang seiner Karriere geben. Pynchon lässt kaum ein gutes Haar an seinen frühen Schreibversuchen, dies aber auf sehr ironische und unterhaltsame Weise.

Auch wenn sie in den Augen des Autors nicht ganz so gut wegkommen, ich habe die Geschichten gerne gelesen. Besonders gefallen haben mir die 3 letzten Geschichten - "Entropie", "unter den Siegeln" & "die heimliche Integration". Ersteres, weil mir der Begriff der Entropie aus dem Studium (wohl?)bekannt ist, oder besser - sein sollte ;) Die zweite Geschichte nimmt einige Begebenheiten seines darauf folgenden Romans "V" vorweg, "die heimliche Integration" ist eine Reflexion über die in den 50er und 60er Jahren (und immer noch) allgegenwärtige "Rassen"frage in den USA.

Demnächst werde ich mir "V" vornehmen, was schon geraume Zeit in meinem Regal darauf wartet, gelesen zu werden 😇

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worth it for the introduction alone. This was my 4th Pynchon, and probably a good time for it. Would probably be a bit anticlimactic if I had saved this for last.

Highlights: "Entropy" and "Under the Rose". Also, a Slothrop relative, wart Doctor makes an appearance.

Good enough writing, but experience enhanced if you're all-in with Pynchon, natch.

[Маx Nestelieiev · Rating 5 out of 5]

the portrait of a genuis as a young PYNCHman. amazing stories about life among death, low and high, entropy and two stories, old world vs. new world and about blockbusting and integration. all TRP themes are here but not so complicated as in later works. Still he was a great writer from the beginning and he is one of the greatest now.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading Gravity’s Rainbow last year I decided to take this year off from reading any Pynchon, and I almost did it. Back last summer I found this copy of Slow Learner. Now at the midway point through Pynchon’s bibliography I decided this would be a good next pick before tackling the back half.

This collection of short stories covers the early years of Pynchon’s writing career with stories from 1959 to 1964. This collection was initially published in the mid 1980’s and it's always been my understanding that this collection is more so something to tie over Pynchon fans in the drought between Gravity’s Rainbow and Vineland. Something for the die hards to get a closer look at the master’s methods. Those assumptions are pretty much correct but that’s not to say I didn’t find parts of this collection quite enjoyable.

While not an amazing collection overall, there are elements that are worth checking this out for. First is the introduction done by Pynchon himself, where he admits that these aren't very good stories but it does offer a good reflection on his time in college and directly after writing these. It’s always interesting to read these kinds of introductions, considering he so rarely offers his thoughts to the public outside of his work.

Most of these stories really are just Pynchon working out ideas that would go on to be better utilized in later works, particularly in his first novel V. I would recommend reading this book directly after reading V as there are many similarities here. The stories of goofy 1950s navy men, particularly an early appearance of the character Pig Bodine, were fun to revisit especially after having just watched the Paul Thomas Anderson film The Master a few months back for the first time.

Other early hints are the story Under The Rose, which is essentially a first draft of a chapter in V that would end up being done a lot better in its final iteration. The story Entropy is probably closest to the Pynchon style we come to know. This story has a reputation that precedes it for this reason. While reading it I did enjoy it but I think this reputation overhyped it for me as it is rather short and pretty minimal compared to what Pynchon accomplishes later on.

Overall these stories are not much like Pynchon’s style as we come to know it in later novels. These stories are a lot easier to read and quicker paced. While I didn’t find any to be terrible, most of them are pretty forgettable. I enjoyed the final story, The Secret Integration, best. It is the longest story and offers a really interesting side of Pynchon that I hadn’t read from before. Writing from the perspective of children and their secret organization fascinated by the world of adults, he explores themes of race that were most prevalent around the 1964 Civil Rights Act, while still offering a level of fun and excitement.

I agree with the sentiment that this collection is solely for the Pynchon die hards. I enjoyed it for what it was but in comparison with any of his actual novels that I’ve read this leaves a lot to be desired.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slow Learner a collection of Pynchon's early short stories, is preceded by his much later reflections upon them. This alleged introduction should definitely have been placed at the end of the book; I read it after the stories accordingly. The stories themselves are interesting as indications of the writer Pynchon would become, one fond of peculiar names, confused conspiracies, paragraph-long digressions, and atmospheric settings. However his critical reflections also diagnose their flaws accurately. These stories have an immaturity of perspective, a much less confident writing style than his novels, and in several cases nothing much happens in them. They are revealing nonetheless, as Pynchon comments:

It is no secret nowadays, particularly to women, that many American males, even those of middle-aged appearance, wearing suits and holding down jobs, are in fact, as incredible as it sounds, still small boys inside. Flange is this type of a character, although when I wrote this story I thought he was pretty cool. He wants children - why isn't made clear - but not at the price of developing any real life shared with an adult woman. His solution to this is Nerissa, a woman with the size and demeanor of a child. I can't remember for sure, but it looks like I wanted some ambiguity here about whether or not she was only a creature of his fantasies. It would be easy to say that Dennis's problem was my problem, and that I was putting it off on him. Whatever's fair - but the problem could have been more general. At that time I had no direct experience with either marriage or parenting, and maybe I was picking up on male attitudes that were then in the air - more documentably, inside the pages of men's magazines, Playboy in particular. I don't think this magazine was the projection, exclusively, of its publisher's private values: if American men had not widely shared such values, Playboy would have quickly failed and faded from the scene.

The standout, as Pynchon acknowledges, is the final story, written a few years later than the others. This follows a group of young boys through the horrific racial politics of 1960s suburban America. It includes characteristic Pynchon strangeness and whimsy, while also powerfully depicting racism as observed by children. Several other stories have war looming over them, observed laconically by men. In and of themselves, the stories in Slow Learner are disparate and form an idiosyncratic yet not especially compelling or cohesive whole. What elevates them is Pynchon's commentary and context, which I found truly fascinating.

[Antonomasia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read Pynchon's intro weeks ago on a sample. That's pretty much the best thing in this book; still it's interesting to watch development in style and motifs through these stories, which were first published 1960-1964.

The Small Rain A lot of this is a pretty conventional short story, not a bad one though, about an army battalion sent to clear up after a natural disaster. Presumably a semi-autobiographical element: some of the main characters are rank & file soldiers their comrades think are more than smart enough for other work. An amazing few sentences almost summarise why I like Pynchon, as well as being an idea close to my own heart.
What I mean is something like a closed circuit. Everybody on the same frequency. And after a while you forget about the rest of the spectrum and start believing that this is the only frequency that counts or is real. While outside, all up and down the land, there are these wonderful colors and x-rays and ultraviolets going on.
Most books feel to me like they're stuck in that one place. Reading Pynchon is being on the road and seeing all the other spectacular stuff, - though with someone who seems to share some of the same opinions and neuroses, and apparently contains much of one's own general knowledge plus that of a few friends with different specialties.

Low-lands Another fairly conventional story, about an ex-Navy guy and his drinking partners (one with the fabulous name Rocco Squamuglia, Squamuglia later making an appearance in Lot 49 as a fictional Italian city-state) – though it's more anarchic than 'The Small Rain' and in the last few pages spills into a fantasy section reminiscent of a children's book. One of the things I've really enjoyed about Pynchon so far is that his writing actually distracts me from a lot of the stuff other books make me dwell on, and so it is much more fun. 'Low-lands' was an exception as I found myself yet again tiresomely mulling over old relationships.
(I thought Cindy was pretty intolerant; the relationship I had which worked best for the longest time was with someone who sometimes disappeared on multi-day drinking binges and might turn up a couple of hundred miles away. Other people would have soon thought about each of us “I've had enough of this shit” but we rarely thought of it as shit and accepted stuff, just as we each tended to accept other people who were quite weird. However, rather like Miriam in what seems like a satirical scene in the next story 'Entropy' – albeit without breaking windows - I was upset by the same ex's views on philosophy of science. Though we still remain friends fourteen years after first meeting.)

Entropy The whole thing must be intended to represent entropy; it meanders and moves in a way that would be easier to draw as a shape or a graph than to summarise with words. Partly an account of an anarchic lads' house party from the Beat era when jazz was the coolest thing. In other scenes a couple named Aubade and Callisto, apparently living in a greenhouse in the garden, ponder various cultural and scientific phenomena. It's very rare I even consider applying the word pretentious – to those scenes I did. Though A&C are still rather sweet.
A development of immersive digression, fantasy blurring with reality and, well, entropy from the previous piece. There are a couple of paragraphs here better appreciated by someone with a thorough knowledge of physics. As it was, I wasn't sure whether a character's idea followed, or if it was a mystical/pseudo tangent from the science. Like quantum mysticism only with thermodynamics.

Under the Rose Late Victorian British Empire spy spoof with a minor robot presence – another part of the case for “Pynchon invented steampunk”. Most of it was somehow uninvolving and a chore, and I kept wishing I was reading more John Le Carre instead – even though the idea of this story sounds great and there are some marvellous character names, including Hugh Bongo-Shaftsbury.

The Secret Integration Pynchon writes Peanuts. This story, three years and the other side of V from its predecessor, is so much better. Also it's longer which gives the author more space to freewheel. There isn't exactly a beginning, a middle and an end. A bunch of nice and well-meaning pre-teen mostly boys of varying degrees of eccentricity (including reluctant child genius Grover as the brains of the operation) – not to mention their dog - get up to various escapades in a middle American town including home made explosives, pranks with water balloons, being an Alcoholics Anonymous buddy to an old jazz musician, and trying to thwart local racists including their parents. Really really charming.

These stories aren't amazing, a bit of a fans-only thing. Saw one post mentioning they'd been a set text on the reviewer's course – I'm not sure why a tutor would set an author's poorest work. But they were good enough that I enjoyed them as a break from the duller parts of the contemporary novel I was also reading, The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner.

[Iryna Chernyshova]

Раджу спочатку почитати тексти, потім післямову, а потім авторську передмову. І взагалі все треба совати в кінець - треба дві-три післямови, най буде.

Сподобалось оповідання «Таємниче інтегрування», воно найбільш «людське». З деякими персонажами інших сподіваюсь зустрітись в наступних книгах. Ну і звичайно, маг-чарівник Макс Нестелєєв докладно розповів що це все було.

[Παύλος · Rating 4 out of 5]

Πρώτη επαφή με τον Πύντσον.

Η αλήθεια ειναι πως περίμενα κάτι άλλο, δε ξερω τι ακριβώς. Όχι ότι δεν ήταν καλό, αλίμονο. Απλά σε κάποια σημεία ένιωσα να χάνομαι σε μια περιγραφή χωρίς ιδιαίτερο νόημα. Ευελπιστώ να ισχύει ο,τι έγραψε ο ίδιος στην εισαγωγή ότι δηλαδη πρόκειται για πρώιμα κείμενα του. Οψόμεθα για το επόμενο!

[Wes Allen]

"The Secret Integration" makes for a strong finisher to this engaging collection--a sad but poignant denouement.

[Seth Austin · Rating 3 out of 5]

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

[AB]

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

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

If there was one thing I gained from reading Slow Learner is that Thomas Pynchon’s unique writing style was the result of trial and error. These five stories document how Pynchon slowly became the literary powerhouse he is known as today. Usually when there are short stories, I try to avoid describing them individually but since there are only five of them plus an introduction, I’ll break my rule.

The introduction by Pynchon himself is worth the price of the book alone, I make it a point to seek out books with his forewords (so far it’s Jim Dodge’s The Stone Junction and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, I still have to find his Richard Farina one) and this is no exception. For someone who is known not to divulge anything about himself, we readers are getting 21 pages about his writing life : the mistakes he regrets in his early work, the circumstances leading to the stories being written, some anecdotes and his writing techniques (which are quite surprising). Funny, warm and charming, it’s everything a Pynchon afficionado would want.

The first story, The Small Rain is about a lazy soldier who has a change of heart when he is placed in the middle of a site where people have perished. Thematically there’s a lot of Pynchonian themes : the futility of war and the inevitability of death. Stylistically this story could have been written by anyone with a strong grasp of the English language and a knack for conventional plot structure. It’s very good but that’s it. Pynchon’s work has a way of transcending itself. That doesn’t happen here.

Next up is Low-lands. This is displays Pynchon’s weirder side but it feels restrained. A man with undesirable friends is kicked out of his house by his wife and goes to a garbage dump, where he is seduced by a little person and has to make a life changing decision. It’s not as zany as v or Gravity’s Rainbow but it is funny and delightfully strange. I was reminded of George Saunder’s early short stories. It is worth noting that Pig Bodine makes his first appearance.

Entropy (the state of chaos and is also the measure of thermal energy) is a turning point. It’s written in the Pynchonian style which is well known and contains themes which are later explored in his novels. Entropy details a three day party which includes discussions about science and physics interspersed with insane goings-on. Cleverly Pynchon incorporates both definitions of the story’s title. A definite stand out.

The story Under the Rose is a complete dog pile. It’s an attempt to create an intellectual spy caper, which serves a commentary on future generations of people but it fails. Think of a long dirge. Strangely enough I don’t mind it when Pynchon will devote ten pages to atmospheric writing but here it just doesn’t work.

The concluding piece, The Secret Integration is a work of genius. It was written on year after V was published and it displays all of Pynchon’s strengths as a writer. In essence this is a story about racism as seen through a gang of children but it’s strange, controversial ( I guess problematic), prescient, non linear and beautifully written. The Secret integration was a pure pleasure to read and can be another reason to own this collection. The story also features Hogan Slothrop, the brother Tyrone reminisces about in Gravity’s Rainbow.

For a Pynchon fan Slow Learner is essential as it displays Pynchon’s slow steps to becoming a writer but it also helps fans understand where his ideas come from. For the casual Pynchon fan, I wouldn’t say it’s a must read but I do think that the introduction and last story should be read by anyone, even with a passing interest in this notoriously hermetic author.

[Tosh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The most interesting aspect of this volume of short stories is the introduction by its author Thomas Pynchon. He's very funny and there is a certain amount of charm in how he looks at his work when he was young... and before he became the icon that he is now. The only book I have read all the way through is his last novel "Inherent Vice" which I loved, because it reminded me of my youth in Southern California and all the references both culturally and actual stores in actual locations are just perfect. The other book I love is "Against the Day" and I stopped reading it half-way through. Not due to the book itself, but I think more due to life at the time. It was such a rich experience to go through that book, and it is one of the few pieces of literature, where I thought this guy is actually a genius. And yes i will finish that book!

The short stories here are very so-so, but has touches of his brilliance but not totally formed yet. I think the short story format is too restrictive for Pynchon - he needs the big scale 70mm book print to get his ideas across. And even that its difficult due to his narratives, which are deeply textured and not simple by any means. He's a writer where you really think about the research he has done and the way he conveys or writes his thoughts down on paper - it is not a book about his personal life, but the life that lives in his head.

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Vittorio Ducoli · Rating 4 out of 5]

L'apprendistato di un grande narratore del caos

Dopo la lettura di un'opera come V., la cui complessità e vastità sorprende e per certi versi sconcerta, leggere i cinque racconti contenuti in questo ottimo volume delle edizioni e/o porta a conoscere un Pynchon sostanzialmente diverso, più convenzionale (se mi si passa il termine, da intendersi comunque compreso entro più serie di virgolette). I motivi di questa convenzionalità sono a mio avviso essenzialmente due. Il primo è che si tratta di racconti giovanili: le stesse edizioni e/o, qualche anno prima hanno pubblicato un volume, identico nel contenuto ma diverso nella forma, chiamandolo Un lento apprendistato, titolo che a mio avviso meglio riflette il carattere preparatorio di questi racconti rispetto alle successive opere lunghe dello scrittore statunitense. Il secondo motivo della diversa densità letteraria tra questi racconti e i romanzi è di carattere per così dire strutturale: la forma-racconto, con il suo esaurirsi in poche decine di pagine, non consente a Pynchon di allestire quel caleidoscopio continuamente mutevole di storie, toni e cromatismi che caratterizza ad esempio un'opera come il citato V. e che costituisce per certi versi il nucleo fondante del postmodernismo pynchoniano.
Dicevo che si tratta di una serie di racconti giovanili: quattro dei cinque racconti, infatti, sono stati scritti prima del 1963, anno di pubblicazione di V. (suo primo romanzo) ed il primo della raccolta, Pioggerella, risale al 1958, dunque ad un autore ventunenne. Solo l'ultimo, L'integrazione segreta, è stato scritto nel 1964, dopo V., e proprio per il suo essere posteriore al romanzo d'esordio dimostra come il racconto in quanto forma narrativa sia strutturalmente incapace di contenere gli elementi essenziali della prosa di Pynchon: non è a mio avviso un caso che in seguito l'autore abbia deciso di dedicarsi ad opere di ben altro respiro (se si esclude parzialmente L'incanto del lotto 49, che comunque appartiene ancora alla prima fase dell'attività letteraria dell'autore, essendo del 1966) che sole gli hanno dato la possibilità di dispiegare la sua forza corrosiva nei confronti della struttura della narrazione che è il mezzo espressivo che lo caratterizza.
I cinque racconti di Entropia e altri racconti, pubblicati in volume nel 1984 con una prefazione dell'autore su cui tornerò, sono comunque tasselli preziosi per comprendere l'evoluzione dello scrittore Pynchon, anche e soprattutto perché ci rivelano – proprio attraverso la loro generale convenzionalità espressiva - alcune delle tematiche di fondo della narrativa pynchoniana, che nelle opere maggiori corrono il rischio di essere in qualche modo sommerse dalla sovrastruttura narrativa, dalla brillantezza (o complessità, se si vuole) del modo di narrare.
Trovo infatti riduttivi e non rispondenti alla realtà (almeno per quella che è la mia conoscenza dell'autore) i tentativi – come quello operato da Roberto Cagliero nella postfazione a questo volume - di attribuire a Pynchon intenti narrativi in cui ...non si cela un'ambizione totalizzante, né si intravvedono intenti programmatici generali… Non vi è [in Pynchon] tentativo di produrre una letteratura-guida, semmai il progetto consiste nell'affrontare certi problemi formali…. La prova del fatto che Pynchon scrive avendo in mente la necessità di sottoporre a una critica radicale alcuni dei paradigmi fondanti la società in cui vive, e che quindi la soluzione di certi problemi formali sia ben lungi dall'essere la motivazione del suo narrare è data proprio da questi racconti ed anche, in maniera chiara, dalla prefazione che venticinque anni dopo Pynchon antepone alla loro pubblicazione. Se Pynchon giunge, con V. e le opere successive, ad affrontare radicalmente problemi formali inventando in qualche modo il cosiddetto postmodernismo è perché si è reso conto che le cose che ha da dire non possono che essere dette in un modo diverso da quello usato sino ad allora: è perché narrare il caos inenarrabile di una società consumistica che vive sotto l'incubo della distruzione atomica e della progressiva automatizzazione delle funzioni e financo delle relazioni sociali richiede un nuovo paradigma narrativo, come avevano per altro verso intuito i modernisti all'epoca della crisi della società borghese ottocentesca. E' questo a mio avviso che fa di Pynchon un grande narratore, non il fatto che si possa essere occupato in astratto di certi problemi formali. E' quantomeno bizzarro che Cagliero non si accorga che proprio il contenuto del volume del quale sta scrivendo contraddice la sua apodittica valutazione.
Il volume propone per primo Pioggerella, un racconto di ambientazione militare, che molto deve nello stile alla letteratura della beat generation. L'intento di critica alla gerarchizzazione militare e sociale, alla meccanicità e alla stereotipizzazione delle relazioni umane che induce è evidente (Pynchon dirà nella prefazione del 1984 che il racconto esprime una prospettiva di classe, e che il servizio militare ha comunque il merito di costituire un'ottima introduzione alla struttura generale della società), ma il racconto è certamente opera di uno scrittore immaturo, come l'autore fa notare nella citata prefazione.
Di ben altro spessore è a mio avviso il successivo Terre basse, dove si intravedono alcune luci che diverranno fari nelle opere maggiori. Nel racconto fa emblematicamente la sua comparsa il personaggio di Pig Bodine, marinaio anarchico e depravato che ritroveremo in V., ma è soprattutto nella descrizione delle Terre basse, la discarica in cui si rifugia il protagonista dopo l'improvvisa rottura della sua tranquilla vita da esponente della middle class che appare per la prima volta la metafora del caos sistematico in cui è precipitata la società. Questa città alternativa e segreta, fatta di vicoli delimitati da muri di pneumatici ed elettrodomestici abbandonati, dove Dennis Flange viene risucchiato dal canto di una sirena-zingara e dove trova una nuova dimensione esistenziale nella quale immergersi almeno per un po' la dice lunga sulla cupa visione di Pynchon rispetto alla società in cui vive.
Entropia, il racconto giustamente più noto della raccolta, estremizza coerentemente il senso di mancanza di futuro che caratterizza il mondo di Pynchon: per il secondo principio della termodinamica, l'aumento irreversibile di entropia porterà l'universo alla morte termica, ad uno stato di temperatura uniforme in cui non sarà più possibile alcuno scambio e quindi alcuna forma di vita. Pynchon descrive il raggiungimento di questo stato di immobilità nel nostro vivere quotidiano, presentandoci ciò che avviene in due appartamenti di un palazzo americano. In uno si svolge una festa sfrenata, in cui ormai nessuno riesce più a entrare in relazione ed a comunicare con l'altro, in cui tutti sono ubriachi e fanno cose senza senso. Al piano di sopra una coppia, che si è isolata in una sorta di serra, è conscia che la morte termica dell'universo sta giungendo ma è incapace di una qualsiasi reazione: l'impotenza di Callisto (nome emblematico, come quello di Meatball, il casinaro del piano di sotto), è simboleggiata drammaticamente dalla sua incapacità di trasmettere il proprio calore corporeo ad un uccellino che vuole salvare dalla morte. Per Pynchon, quindi, né chi ostenta una vitalità fasulla né chi si ritrae nella propria superiore coscienza intellettuale è in grado di fermare il caos sociale, la degradazione dell'energia che porterà inevitabilmente alla morte della civiltà: la tardiva ed inutile rottura della parete della serra da parte della donna di Callisto non farà altro che far entrare anche in quell'ambiente la morte termica. Nella prefazione Pynchon critica fortemente il racconto, accusandosi di avere piegato le storie e i personaggi a una tesi predefinita: anche se ciò può essere in parte vero, è però indubbio che si tratta di un racconto di una forza notevolissima, di una lucidità disperante.
Sotto la rosa è a mio avviso il racconto più debole, sorta di anticipazione di alcune delle pagine di V. che si svolgono alla fine dell'800. E' comunque anche qui notevole come per il tramite di una sorta di spy-story Pynchon ci comunichi l'impossibilità, da parte del singolo, di interpretare e di influire sugli oscuri disegni del potere, di dipanare le inestricabili matasse del caos mondiale. L'esecuzione di Porpentine, spia gentleman ormai fuori tempo, rappresenta ancora una volta la degradazione barbarica della società lanciata verso l'apocalisse della prima guerra mondiale.
La raccolta termina con L'integrazione segreta, il racconto ad un tempo più tenero e più scopertamente di denuncia di uno dei tratti caratterizzanti la società statunitense degli anni '60 (per la verità in buona parte anche di oggi): la discriminazione razziale, che Pynchon lucidamente attribuisce essenzialmente a fattori economici (i negri trasferitisi nel quartiere ne deprezzano i valori immobiliari). La banda di ragazzini che progetta azioni rivoluzionarie, che sola cerca di confortare il disperato musicista nero che verrà brutalmente arrestato dalla polizia, che si inventa un amico nero figlio inesistente della famiglia presa di mira dai loro genitori razzisti, secondo me si ispira ad alcune delle più belle pagine di Mark Twain, e sembra dirci, per un attimo, che forse le giovani generazioni potranno cambiare le cose. L'apparentemente dolce finale, però, ci richiama ancora una volta alla ineluttabilità del ritorno alla normalità delle cose, alla loro immutabilità.
Insomma, se come detto la forma di questi racconti è inevitabilmente diversa da quella delle opere maggiori, la sostanza con cui sono costruiti è molto simile, e proprio questa differenza di forma, questo loro essere più piani, ci permette di scoprire più agevolmente tramite questi racconti il radicale approccio di critica sociale ed esistenziale di questo grande scrittore contemporaneo.

[Nikola Pavlovic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pincon je mnogo dobar pisac! Nekada i suvise komplikovan ali to je njegov stil. Britak um, lude ideje, nenormalna atmosfera.

[Anton Hychka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thomas Pynchon released this book because he did. It is not “nothing,” but it is also not “something”

[Sequoyah · Rating 4 out of 5]

The last story is one of my favorite short stories that I have ever read.
This collection really isn’t Pynchonian in style, except for maybe Entropy, which would be similar to the least interesting parts of Gravity’s Rainbow, but they are genuinely good on their own. The introduction as well is great, just for the insights into the standards he holds over his writing. The critiques he has for these early stories don’t really hold for me, as I found them all (except entropy) enjoyable and, at times, masterful. Even if you dislike his novels, you may enjoy these stories as they almost all are very accessible.