GRGR(20) 1904 revisited

[Lycidas at worldnet.att.net]

jporter wrote:
> 
> In Hank Adams mode, "the narrator," offerring a little solace to the
> water-closeted Achtfaden:
> 
> "Look at it this way, Achtfaden....If tensor anaysis is good enough for
> turbulence, it ought to be good enough for history. There ought to be
> nodes, critical points... ...1904 was one of them-...it was the year the
> American Food and Drug people took the cocaine out of Coca-Cola, which gave
> us an alcoholic and death-oriented generation ideally equipped to fight WW
> II..." (p451-2)
> 
> Not sure if the narrator is speaking for P. here, but this is baloney. Not
> only is the premise of tensor analysis applied to history a narrative load
> of crap, but with hindsight, cocaine, especially in the form of crack, has
> turned out to be one of the most damaging and violence promoting
> substances, ever.  Irrespective of any CIA involvement in trafficking, if
> this passage doesn't make today's P. wince, I'm ducking for him.
> 
> P. is a slick writer, but he can be an arrogant s.o.b., and when he's bad,
> he can stink up even the Rucksichtslos.
> 
> jody


TRP is at a distance laughing at this narrator and so should
we. The wind-tunnel gives it away, this narrator is as
Paranoid (there are several forms of Paranoia in GR, in this
case, think of this narrator as Paranoid exaggerator and
liar)  and as unreliable as Marvy as narrator.  Weisenburger
notes that the FDA did not even exist in 1904 and that CC
took the coke out of coke without government pressure.
Weisenburger often attributes these errors to TRP, not a
good idea. I'm not saying the guy never makes a mistake,
it's just that it's best to give him the benefit of the
doubt. When TRP is "wrong" it is usually the case that he
has changed something to fit his narrative or the narrator
is unreliable, a paranoid BSer,  which is the case here. The
arrogance is deliberate, humorous, and I think, very
humanizing.