LSD, JFK, CIA?

[jbor]

on 8/10/01 2:35 AM, Doug Millison at DMillison at ftmg.net wrote:

> If Pynchon had wanted to portray a typical, drug-using suburban housewife,
> Oedipa would be taking a prescription tranquilizer, not refusing to follow
> her doctor's suggestion to take LSD.

Actually, on p. 10-11 Oedipa is refusing to take "the pills" which Hilarius
has prescribed for her. When Herr Doktor asks "You don't believe they're
only tranquillizers," Oedipa echoes his question (his meaning, if not his
exact words, as she will with Roseman a page or so later):

    "Do I trust you?" She didn't, and what he said next explained why not.

And that's when we hear about the community hospital-sponsored experiment
with commonly-available hallucinogens, which she has also refused to be a
part of.

So the picture that is built up (for me, at least) is of a psychiatrist who
prescribes "tranquillizers" to bored housewives in order to pacify them
emough so that they will participate in his government-sponsored experiments
with hallucinogenic substances. (And this is exactly what happens later with
Mucho, isnt it?) The sudden nightmare apparition of Uncle Sam hovering to
"conscript" Oedipa into the drug trial is the way she is seeing the whole
absurd charade right there and then -- the "sunken yellow cheeks most
violently-rouged" and "eyes gleaming unhealthily" are embellishment enough
on the original image and its intended appearance to substantiate this
reading I think  -- and it seems to me that her visionary faculties are
pretty astute even without chemical assistance at this point. (Perhaps it
was the kirsch!) 

I can recall _Bewitched_ episodes dating from the early and mid-60s where
Abner Kravitz blames Gladys's "medication" for her "visions" of the
supernatural goings on across Morning Glory (?) Circuit, and Darren Stevens'
mother similarly confounded, or continually complaining of her "sick
headaches" to Frank, and asking for her pills. These are the stereotypes,
but like all stereotypes they have a basis in truth. To an extent Pynchon
subverts the stereotype because Oedipa, even though she is obsessively
dependent on going to see her shrink, *isn't* taking the "tranquillizers" he
has prescribed.

best