Drugs in Pynchon's fiction

[David Morris]

>From: rj [snip] ol' George likes a Smoak is an endearing characteristic, 
>both to Martha and to us, I think [snip] hashish in the Hollandaise at 
>Raoul dePerlimpinpin's party in *GR
>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)
>
>[snip] 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.
>
YES YES YES.
This was an eloquent answer to a non-starter question.
Thank you, rj.

DM

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