COL49 Re: All I am saying...

[jbor]

But there was also the stereotype of the harried suburban housewife addicted
to prescription drugs, like Valium, which would have been very familiar to
Pynchon, to his readers, and to just about everyone else, give or take.
Think of Jacqueline Sussann's _Valley of the Dolls_, for example, which was
published in 1966 I think, and any number of movies and tv shows from the
50s and 60s, which exploited this phenomenon. If anything I think there is
an ironic juxtaposition of prescription "tranquillizers" with other,
"harder", criminalised drugs like LSD (and heroin), to make a point about
inconsistencies in drug legislation and hypocritical attitudes to drug
consumption.

best

on 8/8/01 12:35 PM, John Bailey at johnbonbailey at hotmail.com wrote:
> 
> I don't know if the sherry-sipping TV-watching milkman-eyeing stereotype was
> firmly in place when COL49 was written, but P. isn't buying into it.