Acid Dreams

[grip at netcom.com]

On Mon, 25 Sep 1995, Eric Dean Rasmussen wrote:

> At the moment, I'm working on a paper about drugs in Gravity's Rainbow.  
> It's a topic that's been largely overlooked by critics.  I'm having 
> trouble getting a workable angle on the subject though.  ACid Dreams has 
> been a great help.  I highly recommend the book to anyone.  FAscinating & 
> frightening stuff.  Funny too in a Catch-22 sorta way.  When I get a decent 
> draft together, I'll write up a summary. If you have any other ideas 
> about background material with which to approach the topic of Pynchon & 
> drugs let me know.

I have no idea what's in the book, Acid Dreams, but on my first reading 
through GR, I had the distinct feeling that many passages were the kinds 
of mental exercises I went through when under the influence of 
psychotropic substances. Unfortunately for the literary world, when I 
examined what I had written while under the influnce, after coming down, 
it was mostly trite, banal, gibberish. I don't do drugs any more, but it 
is an intriguing idea (to me) to read GR while under the influence of a tab 
or 3 of LSD.

grip