Drugs in Pynchon's fiction

[rj]

In Pynchon's texts, relativism and ambiguity are achieved through
grammatical and linguistic means, as well as via the shifting points of
view. The second person and first person plural intrusions, passive and
conditional (implied here) tense constructions, intermingled tones of
neutrality and insinuation, the combination of straight objective
description with ironic exposition (and meta-exposition): all are
strategies for misdirection, multiplicity (perspectivism), and
indeterminacy. I don't think Pynchon is making any sort of endorsement
or condemnation in either of these passages, although in both cases it
could be argued that "he", rather than a character or narrative persona,
is speaking. But it is *the reader* who infers "his" endorsement or
condemnation.

> "The circuits of the brain which mediate alarm, fear, fright, fight, lust, and territorial paranoia are temporarily disconnected. You see everything
> with total clarity, undistorted by animalistic urges.  You have reached a state which the ancients have called nirvana, all seeing bliss."
> -- Thomas Pynchon on MDMA

(I'd also be interested to hear the context in which this statement was
supposedly made and co-opted, and corroboration of its authenticity, as
Pynchon has reputedly never done an interview.)

> the year the American 
>  Food and Drug people took the cocaine out of Coca-Cola, which gave us an  
>  alcoholic and death-orientated generation of Yanks ideally equipped to fight WW 
>  II ..." (GR, p. 452)



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

> Slothrop is constantly moving in and out of
> drug induced states. Not all of Slothrop's drug trips are so
> "happy go lucky" as his conversation in the down the bowl
> trip demonstrates: "I don't have anything in mind."  "WE
> DO." (my emph.)

Slothrop's conversation with the doctors while he trips down into the
Roseland bowl is occurring *outside* the trip, isn't it? The doctors and
scientists, under Pointy's instructions, have forced the trip on poor
Tyrone, and have a sinister purpose, but even so the insights Slothrop
gleans while tripping are extremely important for his understanding of
the way The System(s) work/s (as the passage on 688 demonstrates), and
are crucial to his quest for self and the journey on the path of
transcendence/immanence he is undertaking; even though these
illuminations are absolutely incomprehensible -- mere hints or will o'
the wisp suggestions of significance -- as revealed to the scientists
(or us) in the cold hard rational (white) light of day, through the
empirical methodology of Science (and the colonising medium of Language,
another System connected with bleaching in *GR*, I think.)

best