Drugs in Pynchon's fiction

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

> Here's something a bit similar. Though I think I said in the previous post
> that P-characters are not Real in the sense of being fully developed
> three-dimensional human persons there is another sense in which the
> writing is Ultra-Real. When I first read GR I felt certain P would have
> had to have lived  through the War Period in order to write about it the
> way he did. The verisimilitude was so striking--at least the equal of the
> Mailers and other cats who had actually  been there. P's relative youth
> ruled out any first hand experience. So here is another plug for the
> library research side of the guy--but Reality was produced. (as a
> correlary, whatever else GR may be ABOUT it is truly about the seminal
> event in history we know and (yes) love as World War II.
> 
> 
> 
>                         P.

what about Red badge of Courage and other examples of
writers without first hand experience of war. Or am screwed
up here? In any event, I agree with your assessments here
Paul. 

TF