Drugs in Pynchon's fiction

[rj]

Doug Millison <millison at online-journalist.com>:

> Making marijuana the target of Bopp and the CAMP Nazis in Vineland shows
> pretty clearly whose side TRP is on, don't you think? He gives pot the
> loving treatment in Mason & Dixon, too. Pot in M&D would also seem to
> illustrate the good/evil dichotomy I spoke of re LSD in GR, as pot is
> associated with the noble Native Americans (and the indigenous peoples in
> their Latitudes & Departures adventures) even as it is exploited
> commercially by the capitalist settlers who colonize the giant marijuana
> tree.

Yes, these are some of the examples I was thinking of, too, as well as
that surprising caricature of George Washington (in which, whatever else
Pynchon might be signifying, the fact that ol' George likes a Smoak is
an endearing characteristic, both to Martha and to us, I think -- *M&D*
280 ff). I also think of the hashish in the Hollandaise at Raoul de
Perlimpinpin's party in *GR* (p. 244 -- one of very few truly Menippean
moments in Pynchon's novels), where it introduces an element of fun and
playfulness into the narrative, as well as possibilities for liberation.

Pynchon's knowledge of the procedures and jargon of the various drug
subcultures, and the range of experiences presented, is concomitant with
the other areas of specialised erudition in his texts. (In other words,
he's done his homework here as well.) I wonder whether the more
fantastic sequences and startling images in his fiction might owe
something to the heightened consciousness of drug euphoria.

The use of drug terminology and references to drug practices are
ongoing. In *Lot 49* they become a literary metaphor for Oedipa's
feeling of superfluousness:

"What the road really was, she fancied, was this hypodermic needle,
inserted somewhere ahead into the vein of a freeway, a vein nourishing
the mainliner LA, keeping it happy, coherent, protected from pain, or
whatever passes, with a city, for pain. But were Oedipa some single
melted crystal of urban horse, LA, really, would be no less turned on
for her absence." (16)

This technique is sophisticated in *GR* to the point where rhetorical
figures are replaced by the actualisation of drug consciousness as a
narrative strategy:

"Crosses, swastikas, Zone-mandalas, how can they not speak to Slothrop?
He's sat in Saure Bummer's kitchen, the air streaming with kif moires,
reading soup recipes and finding in every bone and cabbage leaf
paraphrases of himself . . . " (625)

" ... and don't think this wretched old horny dopefiend [Saure] doesn't
love her, because he does, and don't think he isn't praying, writing
down his wishes carefully on cigarette papers, rolling up in them his
finest sacramental kif and smoking them down to a blister on the lip,
which is the dopefiend's version of wishing on a star ... " (685)

Tyrone's drug-dealing missions in *GR* are characterised by a spirit of
adventure, a devil-may-care happy-go-lucky fatalism which the text does
not denigrate (imo). Of course, the absolute escapism of it all is also
well-acknowledged:

"( ... Those like Slothrop, with the greatest interest in discovering
the truth, were thrown back on dreams, psychic flashes, omens,
cryptographies, drug-epistemologies, all dancing on a ground of terror,
contradiction, absurdity.)" (582)

Notwithstanding this, Tyrone's drug quests are also depicted as a
welcome release from the frustration and futility of more "rational"
attempts to come to terms with The System(s) which are bearing down on
him. Drug euphoria is equated with moments of religious and
superstitious enlightenment, of sexual ecstasy and release, of suicide
and death, and with the human subconscious itself. It is the seeming
unfetteredness of such rhapsodies that Pynchon appears to relish. They
are each liberating -- responses to and rebellions against structure and
system. Immoral (or amoral) though they might be (and I for one wouldn't
condone spiking people's food or drink, or feeding hash brownies to your
unsuspecting grandmother, as Pynchon seems to), they are gestures of
defiance, existential assertions, life-affirming.

I'm not so sure about good/evil dichotomies, however, or bandying that
"Nazi" label about with such abandon, and I'm sure Terrance will have
some textual examples in mind to support his contentions, which were:

> How about Zoyd's use of LSD in VL? The Van Meter trip?
> Others and other drugs? Certainly coke is not something we
> could say is in any way life affirming in Pynchon's fiction?
> How about Pot? I don't think Pot is portrayed in a positive
> light either? 

I'd be particularly interested to read any anti-coke references, I must
say. But I do agree with Mike Weaver that there is on this, as with most
things in P's fiction, a relativistic attitude.

best