276
JEREMY LARNE R
presents a new set of aiscouragements, and that many, beaten, end
in
submission, human yo-yos; still, the novelist does less than he might
if
he
is
content with merely chronicling, or souping-up, or fancifying the
yo-yoing.
If
passivity is accepted at its face value, self-exploration easily
thins to self-indulgence; and when one's vision of life is vitiated, life
itself begins to wither away. The novel of self-indulgence is not only a
drag in itself but a lie about the possibilities of living and writing.
Pynchon comes closest to a confrontation with his assumptions
in
the scene in which Benny leaves Rachel, and she tries to tell him that
he's just using the role of ccschlemihl" to protect himself. For a page or
two, the dialogue becomes true; there is a possibility of involvement
and discovery. But the author chooses the easy moral-Benny hasn't
the guts for love, he flees-and the coast is clear for more exotic maze·
making.
After all is said and done, however, I cannot feel that Pynchon's
mistakes will prove fatal to him. He is a writer of incredible range
and intelligence, incapable of stupidity or bad taste. In a way ' these
virtues are almost limitations, when one thinks of the many narrow
talents in this country who mixed their gifts with a kind of boorishness
and childishness. Pynchon seems to be a representative of a new genera–
tion, a generation of old young men, prematurely sophisticated, coolly
omniscient without ever having passed through the stages of involve–
ment. The only credo that
V.
offers-cckeep cool but care"-may
be
sensible, but is far removed from the cranky intensity that leads to
great art. Perhaps
if
Pynchon will throw down the metaphysical
apparatus and raise something more particular just as high, he will yet
give us the whole alphabet of emotion.
Jeremy Larner
ANTI- AND PSEUDO-INTELLECTUALS
ANTI·INTELLECTUALISM IN AMERICAN LIFE.
By
Richord Hofstodt.r.
Alfred A. Knopf. $6.95.
Anti-intellectualism is, of course, not limited to America,
yet it has often assumed a peculiar virulence here. In this supe
volume, Richard Hofstadter traces some of the major sources of anti-;
intellectualism in American history. Hofstadter is among the very
f
American historians who combine original scholarship with an
