"They Don't Know It, but We're Integrated": Thomas Pynchon's "the Secret Integration" and the Saturday Evening Post

9 4 Y ‘ ‘ T H E Y D O N ’ T K N O W I T , B U T W E ’ R E I N T E G R A T E D ’ ’ T H O M A S P Y N C H O N ’ S ‘ ‘ T H E S E C R E T I N T E G R A T I O N ’ ’ A N D T H E S A T U R D A Y E V E N I N G P O S T T E R R Y R E I L L Y Thomas Pynchon’s writing can been seen as a series of interlocking puzzles. The texts themselves have been regarded as ‘‘dense,’’ di≈cult,’’ and ‘‘confusing,’’ or, to paraphrase Tony Tanner’s description of the narrative of Gravity’s Rainbow, sometimes it’s hard to tell if we’re reading about a bombed-out building or a bombed-out mind. His short stories and novels have attracted a great deal of critical attention from scholars who have tried, with little success, to arrive at essentialist readings of the titles. Several articles have sought to ‘‘explain’’ titles of some of the short stories – ‘‘Entropy,’’ ‘‘Lowlands,’’ and ‘‘Mortality and Mercy in Vienna,’’ to name only three – and much has been written but very little consensus has been reached about possible meanings of the titles of the eight novels – V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity’s Rainbow, Vineland, Mason & Dixon, Inherent Vice, Against the Day, and Bleeding Edge. The texts are di≈cult and the titles are enigmatic, but Pynchon doesn’t stop there. He pays great attention to details such as the typeface and cover art of his novels, and where and when he places his writing. For example, Slow Learner, his anthology of short stories (most written when he was an undergraduate at Cornell), was published in 1984, and there are more than a few 9 5 R direct and indirect allusions to George Orwell’s 1984. The title may come from Orwell’s text (after electric shock finally convinces Winston Smith that 2 + 2 = 5, O’Brien says, ‘‘You’re a slow learner Winston’’), and Pynchon’s introduction to the collection, a sort of revisionist personal history not unlike Winston Smith’s, may be regarded as a short story in its own right, rather than a conventional introduction. Despite all this gamesmanship and literary sleight of hand, Pynchon’s interests in topics such as science, magic, the uncanny and the paranormal, paranoia, the corporate state, radicalism, civil rights, and revisionist history have remained consistent from his earliest writing to the present. In what follows, I will discuss an issue that occasionally surfaces in commentary on Pynchon’s writing: Why did Pynchon, who was emerging as an important voice among young leftist American writers, choose to publish his early short story ‘‘The Secret Integration ’’ in The Saturday Evening Post, which at the time (1964) was an extremely conservative magazine? I will discuss this not in a conventional literary sense but rather with an eye toward ways that Pynchon uses the form of an apparently simple, entertaining adolescent boys’ story to engage and then to manipulate the Post readers; to invoke various features of the publication history of The Saturday Evening Post while simultaneously calling attention to the magazine’s limited scope and conservative bias concerning issues of civil rights and racial integration in 1964. Pynchon has been interested in issues concerning race and civil rights since he first began writing and publishing. In his first novel, V., for example, Pynchon wanted to include an entire chapter on the character McClintic Sphere, the black jazz saxophonist (perhaps modeled on Ornette Coleman, though Sphere is also Thelonius Monk’s middle name) who appears in other parts of the novel. Corlies (Cork) Smith, Pynchon’s editor at Lippincott, suggested that Pynchon either eliminate or substantially revise the chapter because it raised contemporary ‘‘social issues’’ (civil rights and racism) that Smith felt were inconsistent with the rest of the book. Pynchon chose to eliminate the chapter. Perhaps the clearest and most obvious statement of Pynchon’s interest in civil rights issues is...