GRGR Re: Drugs in Pynchon's fiction

[Paul Mackin]

On Sat, 23 Oct 1999, Doug Millison wrote:
> 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.


Possibly I misspoke. But losing one's animal instincts doesn't sound like
a very good state to be in for creative effort. Alcohol or marijuana would
be better, both offering mild stimulation in small quantities. In large
quantities they too put you in a state of Nirvana. Well, alcohol at
least. More marijuana doesn't seem to  do much of anything, But what do I
know.
			
		P.