Drugs in Pynchon's fiction

[rj]

Paul Mackin <pmackin at clark.net>:

> But it's inconceivable to me that anyone could conclude
> that P is a writer who writes principally from life. Not his life
> certainly. He's an intellectual and an artist. Ask yourself this. 
> Does he ever write about people remotely resembling himself? Are there any
> artists in any of the books. Are there even any people likely to read
> the kind of books he writes. Let me go a step father. Are the characters 
> in p-books really very much drawn from life at all. Anybody's life?

Snipped from a very good post. I agree that for the historical detail of
his novels he did intensive scholarly research. A lot of the stuff in
*GR* comes from the London Times archives; there's a copy of a letter he
sent to someone about archive material on the Hereros and the history of
the Sudwest in one of the critical works, all that Mason & Dixon stuff
etc.

On the other hand there's also that (Seaman &c) Bodine character who
just keeps on keeping on, and almost assuredly has a real life
counterpart somewhere in Pynchon's past. And that American ingenue
adrift in London and Europe thing which he does, whilst emulating a very
Jamesian motif (parodically, no doubt, but when you consider the
reversal of it in *M&D*, that whole Englishman in New York, and New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, etc etc trip, I think it does
become a relevant comparison, as much if not moreso than the
Melville/Hawthorne one, particularly if we throw in a dash of Henry
Adams as well, who once sent James a copy of his *Education* with the
following admonition: "I need hardly tell you that my own marginal
comment is broader than that of any reader and precludes publication
altogether. This volume is a mere shield of protection in the grave. I
advise you to take your own life in the same way, in order to prevent
biographers from taking it in theirs." But, I digress ... ) Well, it's
quite a Realist tactic to make the focal character of the narrative an
outsider in order to bring the social and other contexts into sharper
relief. I do think the American/Western schemiel presence in Pynchon's
fiction is ongoing, and that in it there is something of a (no doubt
self-deprecating and ironic) representation of himself, or his milieu.
It's not so much that he's writing a type of Proustian
quasi-autobiography, but that he's out listening and observing the
voices and attitudes which prevail in the society around him, and these
are what get into the texts, a sort of oral history v. official history
dichotomy if you like.

> between the poles of writing from life and writing from the library P
> comes a lot closer to the latter than the former

I'd contest this, I think, too, and particularly in the context of magic
ritual (eg Tarot, seances) and drug and dream vision experiences as
represented in the texts. And, no, he doesn't write about writers or
creative artists all that much, except that I've sometimes got the sense
with Pynchon's cast that they are in fact writing their own lives. And I
think of that Busby-Berkeley vision Pirate has of himself, or the way
Tyrone imagines himself as Clark Gable or Plasticman, in this context.

But I do agree with you that Pynchon's art fits somewhere in between the
two poles -- I've got him placed somewhat closer to the field than the
studio, however. 

(Thanks to Doug also for the anecdote from *Lineland*, which I haven't
read and certainly won't buy. I had read the Playboy article Siegel
wrote, however, and I can empathise with Doug's scepticism and Paul's
response regarding that individual's motivations and the celebrity
expose-style journalism he purveys. I'm pretty sure Richard Farina would
have dropped the occasional "dig" or "man".)

best