pynchon and drugs,e tc.

[Chris Stolz]

Don Larsson made a good point about drugs in the various novels.  I think
that stylistically _GR_, especially the numerous long lyrical passages that
the narrator indulges in, stuff about the City, etc., absolutely reeks of
cannabinoid dreaming.  I remember the quote in Slow Learner where he writes
about, this being the late Fifties, early sixties,  "having, as yet, no
access to my dream life" and imagine that drugs might've been a way for the
man to let his mind travel in new directions for a while and maybe get
closer to the unconscious stuff that plays into his writing.

Lots of writers've progressed into drug use along with their development as
artists.  Coleridge on opium, Richardson liked his booze (and may've
indulged other substances as well), Joyce drank two liters of wine per day
(before dinner), Kerouac, Miller, etc etc.  
Chris Stolz      Internet:  chstolz at canuck.com
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	Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake.  But this
wide-awake thinking has led us into the mazes of a nightmare in which the
torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason.  When we
emerge, perhaps we will realise we have been dreaming with our eyes open,
and that the dreams of reason are intolerable.  And then, perhaps, we will
begin to dream once more with our eyes closed.

			-- Octavio Paz, _The Labyrinth of Solitude_