LSD, JFK, CIA, RFK, HMO?

[Doug Millison]

"Is wood jim a relatively new poster??"

I think "wood jim" has been around for awhile, but with these anonymous
flame-trolls it's difficult to tell.

I agree, this thread has become tiresome -- but it's become so not because
it's an uninteresting topic  but because a couple of anonymous P-listers,
plus Mackin, have chosen to sabotage it with their usual brain-dead insults.
To a certain degree, I think it's just part of the "disagree with whatever
Doug writes and insult him in the process" that's been the raison d'etre of
several P-listers who have little or nothing original to contribute to the
conversation, and which has led to a few people seeking to defend some of
the most ridiculous stuff you've ever heard:  LSD use was widespread among
American housewives by the early '60s, "jbor" was telling us yesterday.
Yeah, that's the way it was, your average American housewife had a
psychiatrist who was giving her LSD in 1965 -- I remember now, that's what
they were all talking about at those PTA meetings and Tupperware parties,
comparing their latest LSD psychotherapy sessions.  If you believe that,
I've got some dot.com stocks I'd like to sell you, too.

Beyond the need that a few folks seem to have to center their Pynchon-L
existence around disagreeing with and insulting me, some people on Pynchon-L
don't seem to be able to stand the notion, put forward by some readers,
that Pynchon may in fact be pointing to secrets, coding messages into his
work, subtly calling the reader's attention to hidden or little known facts
of world and American history, such as the involvement of U.S. corporations
in the Nazi effort, their culpability in Nazi war crimes that Pynchon makes
an important element of GR  (and rather than counter that with intelligent
argument, they rather systematically derail this larger topic whenever it
emerges, again through ad hominem attack).  The very idea that Pynchon
purposely provides a sub-text that we can read beneath the surface text
seems to offend the literary sensibilities of a few folks in this discussion
group, and they're not content to let others express those notions, they
need to shut down that conversation, and have done so, in fact, many times
over the past four years. (And I find that very strange, because some of
these same folks who on the one hand will deny the validity of any effort to
read soemthing that Pynchon might have "hidden" in his text, will on the
other hand spin out the most ridiculous, jargon-laden readings that use
Pynchon's text as a spring board for flights into fancy that veer very far
from Pynchon's text indeed.) That's why, I believe, that the these few
people detest Charles Hollander's work so -- Hollander does not kow-tow to
academics who look to an argument's theoretical apparatus first and at the
content of the argument only later if ever, but instead Hollander comes to
grips with the material that Pynchon actually writes in his texts and sees
what it might mean to try to put together the puzzle that Pynchon seems to
invite us to put together. It's an earnest attempt that draws scorn from the
ironic Pynchon reader who thinks she's got the inside scoop and knows that
Pynchon is above all that. Of course the Pynchon-L voices that are most
critical of Hollander, and critical of those who take Hollander seriously,
haven't to my knowledge contributed anything of substance to the scholarly
discussion of Pynchon, certainly haven't published any articles in Pynchon
Notes or elsewhere as Hollander has done -- they just sit back and throw
rocks and make wisecracks.