Drugs in Pynchon's fiction

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

rj wrote:
> 
> 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.

All those works of fiction, poetry, philosophy, art, music,
psychology, sciences, history, biography, religion and so on
through the encyclopedia. It is simply astounding really,
but Pynchon talks about writing from one's life experience
in SL intro., sort of giving advice to aspiring writers,
sort of giving advice to himself perhaps, to get out on the
road more, as he did in the Navy, as the wandering scholar,
as the Beat in search of roach motel America and the voices
of real men. One reason I read Pynchon is to hear not the
voices of real men, but the voices of other men's books.
Pynchon, I think it is safe to say, is a thief, a thief that
loves what he takes from others, and loves to put it back
after he's made it Pynchon's.  
> 
> 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. 

Yes, Bodine is back in town, time to go out on the road and
make mischievous fun. 

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. 

Parodically, yes I think I hear and see James all the time
while reading Pynchon. The candy drill is rather Jamesian I
think. Yup, a Realist tactic, oh that Pynchon, how he will
drive the critics mad if they would have James without
Hawthorne, Joyce without Melville. 

I do think the American/Western schlemiel 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.

I know what you mean here, but I don't see a dichotomy. The
schlemiel and schlimazel are interesting choices for Pynchon
and may have much to do with growing up on Long Island and
his identification with James Joyce--In Morality and Mercy
In Vienna(1959) Pynchon combines Jesuits, Jews, Catholics,
and even alludes directly to the opening scene of Ulysses.

Since Jewry’s attitudes towards its own frailty were complex
and contradictory, the Schlemiel was sometimes berated for
his foolish weakness, and elsewhere exalted for his hard
inner strength. For the reformers who sought ways for
strengthening and improving Jewish life and laws, the
Schlemiel embodied those negative qualities of weakness that
had to be ridiculed to be overcome. Conversely, to the
degree that Jews looked upon their disabilities as external
afflictions, sustained through no fault of their own, the
used the Schlemiel as the model of endurance, his innocence
a shield against corruption, his absolute defenselessness
the only guaranteed defense against the brutalizing
potential of might.
     Ruth Wisse    “The Schlemiel as Modern Hero”

Switch the dialects, alter a few details, and most black
jokes can become Jewish Jokes or Irish Jokes with a minimum
of loss
When a Schlimazel’s bread-and butter accidentally
falls on the floor it always lands butter side down; with a
Schlemiel it’s much the same-except that he butters his
bread on both sides first.

    Sanford Pinsker    “The Schlemiel as Metaphor, Studies
in Yiddish and Jewish American Fiction”





> 
> > 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.

I like the idea of Pynchon's characters writing their own
lives, and you have supported this with some good posts in
the past, but I'm with Paul here. Though I think Pynchon's
characters fit into what N. Frye calls "Anatomy" and so I
think it difficult to make this judgment. 
> 
> (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