Drugs in Pynchon's fiction

[rj]

"Terrance F. Flaherty" <Lycidas at worldnet.att.net>:

> I want to get back to
> the LSD in GR and the whiteness, but I'll give a brief
> response to the examples given here and explain why I see
> that in each case we find a natural substance, traditionally
> used for
> ritual, is bastardized or imitated ("a pornography") by the
> elite.

I think that where we disagree is that you don't seem to be
differentiating between the corporatised production, manufacture and
distribution of the drug, and the heightened Nirvanic experience which
the individual user (or communal group) experiences. In both ritual and
consumerist usages the experience of enlightenment and
transcendence/immanence is achieved, and it is generally represented
positively in Pynchon's fiction. The cartelisation and black market
trade are not so, however.

(I recall a coda to one of your posts which said something to the effect
that you had "watched the best minds of the generation destroyed by
drugs", and I wonder if this heartfelt personal bias is colouring your
interpretation of Pynchon's text.)


> there is on this, as with most
> > things in P's fiction, a relativistic attitude.
> > 
> > best
> 
> I think here, rj, I disagree, but I'm not sure of what
> "most"
> implies and how you are using the term "relativistic."
> Relativistic in what sense? As I understand the term, it
> would clash with your qualification that Pynchon's attitude
> towards *most* things is a relativistic attitude. What do
> you mean by relativistic and what are the things that
> Pynchon is not relativistic in attitude towards?

Perhaps I'm using the term incorrectly. I mean to say that Pynchon
presents many differing and apparently mutually exclusive viewpoints and
propositions without ever coming down definitively in favour of one or
any. I said "most" because sometimes he appears to break out of this
relativistic mould -- a rhetorical effect, no doubt, but also an
indication that he has a relativistic attitude even towards relativism
itself. The Realist pose of ambivalence (itself a pornography of
historical objectivity) is discarded and the author urges the reader to
seek out Reed's *Mumbo Jumbo*, or endorses Rossini's 'Tancredi'
tarantella, or admonishes us to take the rotor plugs out of the tractors
at logging sites next time we pass by. 


> 
> Do Pynchon's novels resemble Kerouac's great
> american novel, how? 

I think the point he makes in the *SL* intro is that he took the lesson
from Kerouac to get out on the road himself, and listen to the Greyhound
voices and whatnot, in order to get to the heart of the prevailing
social attitudes and experience. I guess there are resemblances in the
literary register Pynchon adopts. I also think that much in Pynchon's
fiction can be considered phenomenological, and that his narratives are
picaresque, like *On the Road*, *The Dharma Bums* &c.


> Does Eddin miss this? 

Well, correct me if I'm wrong, of course ...


best