The first Thomas Pynchon book I read was V. Benny Profane became my hero because he was clumsy, becausehe was clumsy, but his clumsiness was explained by such a brilliant convention: he was clumsy because he was a schlemiel, and schlemiels were at war with the world of inanimate objects. I was an ungainly guy, and all my life I’d struggled to be able to do the physical activities that came naturally to other kids.
Profane was just the first in a line of schlmiel heroes of Pynchons, heroes who, I think, are self-portraits. Not every book has one, but most do. Tyrone Slothrop of Gravity’s Rainbow; Zoyd Wheeler of Vineland; and now Doc Sportello of Inherent Vice.
Pynchon’s relationship with these characters has evolved. Tyrone Slothrop, especially, seemed to be the butt of all the world’s jokes. The narrator of GR kept reminding us that Slothrop’s main flaw was that he just didn’t feel much, didn’t have many emotions. Sportello is also pretty cut off from his emotions, lustful at times, lonely, frightened that his world of surfers and hippies is going to be stolen away by the new Ronald Regan mindset; but never really subject to moments of passion. But whereas Slothrop’s emotional neutrality always seemed to be a character flaw, Sportello’s character is just a given circumstance of the book. There’s a sense that it’s too late to change it, and maybe it doesn’t need to be changed.
