Given the seventeen-year interval between the publication of Gravity's Rainbow and Vineland, critics may well have reason to find major differences between the two phases of Pynchon's literary career. Whatever the value of this periodization, the usual association of late style and absolute mastery does not quite apply, since it is for the climax of his first period that Pynchon has become part of the literary canon. If his first phase is indeed crowned by the two accepted masterpieces The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow, then Pynchon's first novel, V., assumes a somewhat awkward position. Is it still part of the learning curve (with the author reaching his peak almost immediately afterwards), or is it the first full-bodied illustration of the postmodernism that would become associated with his name, mostly on the strength of the two books that follow? Maybe this question is too determined by these books' later importance, or even by the classical notion of authorial growth, which Pynchon himself reinforced in the introduction to the 1984 collection of his early stories, Slow Learner. The genesis of V. does seem to indicate that he was struggling in his first attempt at long fiction. In an August 1961 letter, Pynchon went as far as telling his editor that he didn't “know dick about writing novels yet and need[ed] all kinds of help.” However, judging from the speed, initiative and efficiency with which he would rewrite the version of the book he had first submitted, both the statement in the letter and his later self-presentation in Slow Learner can be construed as instances of modesty – false or authentic .