Trip

[hb]

>Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 10:12:00
>To: sitka at teleport.com (Steelhead)
>From: hb <hbell at sunset.backbone.olemiss.edu>
>Subject: Re: Trip
>
>did i _conclude_ that " (TRP) has a rather sophmoric understanding of the
drug culture" ?
>        i hope not...I think i said he just didn't use hard drugs in his
lit. as much as others...
>        I'm sure Pynchon's knowledge on drugs is just as encyclopedic as
his knowledge of thermodynamics and rocketry... Hell, the guy supposedly
reads about radio galaxies with a smile on his face.
>        I merely meant that, considering his broad range of topics and
freaked out passages, Hard drugs play a very minor role.
>        that's all.  As i said before though, I don't know the guy and
don't know the slightest about him or his drug use, so why in the hell am i
typin this?  I don't know.  I'm just bored as hell.  Return home in two weeks.
>        Just cracked _Waterland_ by Graham Swift...  good good good.
>
>At 08:43 AM 1/11/97 -0700, you wrote:
>>hb concludes that TRP (known as Trip in the acronym agot of the dc
>>underground) has a rather sophomoric understanding of the drug culture,
>>asserting that hard drugs (of the injectible genre) are absent from his
>>ouvre.
>>
>>Hardly.
>>
>>Seems there were quite a few needles being poked in quite a few veins in
>>GR. My pal Major Marvy gets a dose of sodium pen and boy does he get
>>transformed, right redbug?
>>
>>LSD makes an interesting appearance in COL 49 as a tool of Dr. Hilarius,
>>the Nazi shrink.
>>
>>Early on, Trip was dealing with drugs in a sophisticated and political way,
>>exploring which drugs were used as "controls" of the Firm and which as
>>sources of liberation and illumination.
>>
>>Turns out of course that LSD, for example, was largely introduced in the
>>States by the CIA in its MKCULTURA program, backed by Nelson Rockefeller
>>and the Nazi scientists at Sandoz. Yet, in the hands of Kesey, Dylan,
>>Owsley and the Pranksters--LSD became a ticket to a counter-reality.
>>Leary--that pyscho-religious fascist and narc--is a more difficult
>>character, more similar in my mind to Hilarius and Madame Blavatsky.
>>
>>Vineland's portrayal of Zoyd's trip on Yellow sunshine (was it?) during
>>Prairie's birth is one of the best recreations of an acid trip in
>>literature--if my own flashbacks are any guide.
>>
>>Steely
>>
>>
>>
>