GRGR Re: Drugs in Pynchon's fiction

[Doug Millison]

At 6:07 PM -0400 10/23/99, Paul Mackin wrote:
>I did a bit of a double take on the quote myself as my reply to Chris
>indicated. Can't imagine P wanting for himself the effect  the drug is
>purported to produce. P on occasion might toy with Eastern or occult
>thought but isn't ready for Nirvana yet.

Anybody who has written as much about drug-taking with such keen insight
into the subjective effects AND who calls marijuana a "useful substance"
as TRP does in the SL intro, would seem to me to have the ability to
appreciate the sort of effects ascribed to MDMA in this quote; if he was
hanging around Santa Cruz and Humboldt County as reported during the
writing of Vineland, he would have had to go way out of his way to avoid
this and other drugs.  I also would be shocked to learn that TRP hadn't
taken LSD in the 60s and that the drug hadn't had much the same positive
effect that it did for so many of his contemporaries -- GR, especially,
drips with psychedelic insight, while Vineland comes along a few years
later and puts the psychedelic experience into a poltical context.

Really, can you imagine TRP doing a Clinton, "...but I didn't inhale"?

Terrance does a good job of detailing LSD's place in the symbolism TRP
seems to be laying out in GR, and TRP's playing with the "whiteness"
metaphors sounds good, too, but I still don't see it the clear-cut
LSD=bad/"natural" psychedelic=good dichotomy in GR. You can't read GR and
its psychedelic content without taking into account what's happening in
American society as TRP writes it -- because TRP puts so much of the 60s in
the novel -- and in that larger cultural context, LSD was very much part of
the revolt against the corporate fascist establishment. Even as the
cartels/CIA try to co-opt the psychedelic experience by synthesizing it and
turn it into a weapon, LSD slips beyond their control and works against
Them.  As I've said in a previous post, I believe the OSS reference alludes
to the former OSS officer who went on to become the Johnny Appleseed of
acid -- a reference that seems all the more pointed juxtaposed as it is in
this chapter with the specific reference to Dulles who authorized the evil
MK-ULTRA LSD-as-weapon experiments.

This MDMA quote was mentioned on the P-list a while back, it's found in
_Cyberia_, a book by a friend of mine, Doug Rushkoff. I asked Rushkoff
about it at the time the query came up on the P-list and he told me, "I got
it from Bruce Eisner's book, Ecstasy: The MDMA Story." I don't believe Doug
did anything special to ascertain the quote's attribution to TRP,  he
appers to have just lifted it from the book where he found it. Eisner would
be the one to ask about the attribution to TRP, and I haven't done that.

Re rj's observation that Pynchon hasn't granted any interviews, that's not
exactly correct. Some months ago Chris K wrote:  "According to a story in
the NY Observer written last year or so, TRP was interviewed via fax for
David Hajdu's book about the Sixties as  depicted through the relationships
between Richard and Mimi Farina and  Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.  It's called
Children of Darkness, I think, but I don't have the clip handy."  I know
that Pynchon also responded, through his agent, to questions posed by a
P-lister by fax last year.





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