Drugs in Pynchon's fiction

[Paul Mackin]

On Mon, 25 Oct 1999, Doug Millison wrote:

> Re rj and Paul's back-and-forth on TRP as passive researcher or
> enthusiastic participant (much simplified, I know, no harm intended to
> either of these noble interlocutors!), it may be worth remembering what his
> old girlfriend had to say (IF this is what she said, of course -- we get
> these comments through the infamous JS, who may or may not be giving us the
> story straight, and who has every reason to slant it so that TRP looks bad;
> I must admit that it's hard not to giggle at the way JS has reported these
> comments):
> 
> "I stayed with Jules because he was the poet and the hippie. We actually
> lived in a commune. We weren't pretending. We were the real thing. Tom
> didn't stick his neck out and live the way he wrote. [...]  He's very
> conventional and old-fashioned and has the values of his generation of the
> Fifties from upper class Oyster Bay. He never met a person who said 'dig'
> or 'man' or 'it's not my bag.' It's only in his imagination. He'd like to
> be one of his characters and wear a black leather jacket and stand on the
> corner and spit. Or he'd like to be one of those surfers that he studied
> like a sociologist in Manhattan Beach. He's really a professional
> sociologist, studying people."
> --from _Lineland_


Thanks Doug for the compliment and, yes, the story IS funny. I wonder if
others see the same humor in it I do. As Doug says we don't know how
reliably Crissy's version is being reported. But what if for the sake of
argument we actually  have been given here a decent representation of what
Crissy said by way of comparing Jules and Tom. Of course Crissy knows full
well what Jules will do with the material--use it as quickly  as possible
for self promotion.  Yes, you see exactly where I'm going. Crissy (let us
say) is, against all odds, quite the clever ironist and Jules is the third
person in the piece, the poor obligatory dope left in the dark. What I'm
saying is that Jules tells the story blindly and blissfully unaware that 
it is in fact not unflattering to Tom at all but in actuality quite
unflattering to Jules himself. I do really think that despite superficial
appearances it puts Tom in quite a good light even though Crissy saw him
at the time  as a bit of a square. Because what the story tells is of a
young presumably inexperienced girl who is taken in, deceived if you will,
by the outward trappings  of the poet and flashy hipster, when all the
time, practically within arms reach, is The Real Article, the true poet
who refuses to put on a  show in order to get the girl. Is Crissy in other
words consciously or unconsciously settling a score with the man who once
fooled her. 

Just kidding, Jules, if you're tuned in.

		P.