On-line interview with ?

[Tom Stanton]

>MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu wrote:
> ... (if it is Mr. Siegal I am addressing) the source of that infamous statement 
> about his writing GR while being totally wasted?  I don't think I have ever read 
> P. himself attest to this anywhere...But the idea that Dangerous Drugs actually
> --wrote--Thomas Pynchon, well, it's downright Rushdian.

I have always chuckled at what sounds like indignation over the fact TRP
might have smoked a little pot to fuel the writing process, and the
gullibility
of anyone who believed the brag "I was so fucked up I dunno what I was
doing, but
it was brilliant when I did it..." Let's get real folks, writer, poets,
painters,
et. al. have abused "substances" & created great work, whether on the
substance
or as an after effect. People who make their living critquing these
works don't
usually want to brag to their peers that the subject of their thesis or
book 
is a confirmed pot head (although I find the insider drug jokes funny &
one 
of GR's more endearing qualities). Conversely, anyone who has done more
than 
"skimmed" GR cannot dismiss it as the ravings of a paranoid pot head,
except from
pure meaness. GR is a heavily crafted work of art that you may like or
dismiss
on its own merits. The art world is full of alcoholics, addicts, wife
beaters,
and other abusers, but the one quality they posessed was the ability to
create
great work in spite of (or as a consequence of) their respective
afflictions. 
If TRP's only crime was rollin' up a splif to loosen up his Puritanical
up-
bringing, he would be no worse than millions of us who did precisely the
same
thing during the 60s & beyond.