The Sixties

[Jules Siegel]

There were too many responses on this subject to answer individually. I was
very grateful to see how many people ratified much of my position, even, in
some cases, when they did not find the dialect objectionable.

Although it is true that I last lived in Northern California in 1977, no one
talked the way they do in Vineland. Yet some of the characters in the book
clearly date from that era. I find it very difficult to understand how this
could have changed by 1984, only seven years later.

One writer did say that he had heard the Vineland dialect. I will offer this
caveat: as the marijuana and cocaine scene became more commercially
interesting two new types of people started arriving: big dealers, of both
cocaine and marijuana; and undercover agents. In 1970, for example, a
five-ton load was busted in the Bay area and people spoke of this in awe:
The Five-Ton Load! Cocaine was seen in ounces, not kilos, much less tons.

We were just beginning to see some gunplay and violence. The story that Jann
Wenner rejected, "Cops and Robbers," described the confrontation between the
old-fashioned communal dealing scene and the arrival of the gangsters.
Wenner wanted a story about just the gangsters.

I lived in a commune called The Chinese House in Lagunitas in western Marin
county. During the three to four years of its existence, more than 10,000
people were fed and/or housed there. No one who came to The Chinese House
was ever refused food or shelter. Much of this was supported by marijuana
dealing, which was not really a commerce, though, but grew out of the need
to supply so many people with grass. People contributed what they could.
Some worked and brought in money. One man was a tree-topper for the county
and he brought us the wood we cooked on. We had a little handicrafts store
and a tremendous garden. Friends came and brought food and money. Some were
rich kids from Southern California, others were movie people, including Hal
Ashby. Many were on welfare. Some were just completely crazy and incompetent.

Marijuana and the psychedelics were sacraments. This does not mean they were
necessarily religious, but they weren't just recreational either and they
were by no means mere commerce.

The local police were our friends. They recognized what we were doing and
they even cooperated with us in full knowledge of that we were dealing kilos
of drugs. The situation blew up when a thousand pounds of shitty weed came
through and was accepted for sale, leading to a shoot-out with a gang that
was ripping off dope dealers throughout the county and sometimes raping
their women. The war that followed resulted in the commune's disintegration.

This was happening all over the United States. Pynchon is reporting as an
outsider. I recognize his sympathy, but the gaps in his knowledge cause
distortions that make me feel very uncomfortable. The first time I saw him
after he published V., I asked him why he hadn't turned me on to grass,
which is smoked throughout the novel. He answered, "Hey, I had just smoked a
couple joints myself and didn't know where to get any." He extrapolated
everything in V. from these few experiences. This is quite an admirable
accomplishment, but it also reveals quite a bit about his method, doesn't it?

We had a discussion earlier about Gravity's Rainbow as a reflection of
Sixties sensibility. In Gravity's Rainbow he has extended descriptions of
several dope dealing situations, including scenes that resemble crash pads
in broad outline. Missing are love and caring. There are really only three
characters in the book who are drawn with anything like normal emotional
feelings: Roger Mexico, Jessica Swanlake and, possibly, Katje, who is
depicted as a kind of emotional burn victim.

Pynchon's works were prophetic. What he describes has come about. The seeds
were there. He saw them and so did I, but I was in love and he wasn't. I
didn't leave out the negative aspects in what I wrote, although I did not
give them the full weight they may have deserved, but I find his
descriptions so devoid of love or even human feeling that I feel as if my
life and time were being observed and mirrored by some kind of
extra-terrestrial consciousness to whom it it had a very different and alien
meaning.

I could offer similar comments about The Godfather and other novels about
crime. I lived in the culture of crime all my life. When I was a teenager,
my father used to introduce me to characters who had names like Charlie
Knuckles, Abe the Barber, Red Hymie (and also, Hymie Red, another person). I
admire The Godfather and A Stone for Danny Fisher, which come close to
getting the feeling, but they are observed from without and lack the
essential substance. No one is really interested in publishing what I have
to say about this because the myth of the Godfather is woven into the
political texture of our time and any challenge is either subversive or absurd.

I really don't understand why my personal, emotional response to his work
should arouse such hostile invective. There were many questions in October
and November about what I knew about Pynchon's sources. It seems that any
answer is the wrong asnwer unless it shows a positive correlation. If I were
to discuss his caricatures of Chrisise, I'm sure I would be immediately
attacked as a liar and a fraud and so on. This is really a shame, as I'm
sure that there are scholars and other readers who might find this
information useful in their studies as well as casting some light in some
corners of his admittedly obscure and difficult works.

I am going to search out some of my published work on these themes and I
will put them online and let you all know when you can read them.

Meanwhile, those who are nbew to the list might be interested in reading
"Family Secrets:" http://www.yucatanweb.com/siegel/secrets.htm


--Jules Siegel Apdo 1764 Cancun QR 77501
http://www.yucatanweb.com/siegel/jsiegel.htm