correcting typo RE: col49 2 pt2

Thu Aug 9 09:46:38 CDT 2001

And a good question it is, David.  But you *are* qualifying common
knowledge with "relatively," and that's the point.  One can post list
after list of various and sundry articles and books written on the
subject of LSD prior to the Summer of Love (which I don't contest were
in existence), but "common knowledge" presupposes that a substantial
amount of average American citizens read those publications and
understood those publications to be fluent in the terminology, the
issues, etc. -- thus making it "common knowledge."

I recall reading somewhere that Kesey first heard about LSD in a Life
magazine article.  Fine.  But, as Paul M. (with tongue in cheek,
responding to Millison) pointed out earlier, "before Time magazine does
its cover story a phenomonom is simply too cutting edge for Pynchon
readers to be aware of?"
http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0108&msg=280&sort=date

Just because an article on LSD is published in Life, or Time, or
Newsweek, all of which have a fairly substantial readership, does not
automatically mean everyone within that readership will find enough
interest in that article to read it and thus make it "common
knowledge."  Few people read *every single word* of the publications
they consume.  Can you honestly say you read every single word in every
single publication you encounter?  Of course not.  As intelligent
readers, we pick and choose the topics and articles that interest us,
skim some, ignore others.  Unless one is the Leader of the Free World
with a month-long vacation, few of us even have the time or inclination
to read every single word anyways. Hence, just because information was
available, it doesn't prove that it was "common knowledge" among
citizens. And my guess is that many average American citizens weren't
reading the Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, Psychiatric
Quarterly, or Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics. (Thank you, wood
jim, for the lengthy lists of publications that employ the keyword LSD.
But it doesn't prove anything other than that there were a lot of
publications within the medical field on what was then cutting-edge
stuff.)

My guess is that Pynchon was indeed one of those who had in interest in
such matters, what with his Greenwich Village background. As an alumnus
of Cornell, he no doubt was aware of Timothy Leary at Harvard.  All in
all, I'd say that Pynchon falls into that category of hipsters who were
in-the-know because it was something subversive, something sinister, and
something potentially conspiritorial, so it doesn't surprize me one bit
that it would find its way into his fiction.

Thanks,

Tim

David Morris wrote:

> Here's a question:  If the existence of LSD was not relatively common
> knowledge at the time, then how could Pynchon (or the magazine editors) have
> expected the readers to have any idea what this reference to LSD meant?
>
> >From: "John Bailey" Has anybody ever come across the excerpts from the
> >novel which appeared in magazines?
>
>
>
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>
> Subject: Re: correcting typo RE: col49 2 pt2
> Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2001 11:19:36 +1000
> From: "John Bailey" <johnbonbailey at hotmail.com>
> To: jbor at bigpond.com, pynchon-l at waste.org
> Has anybody ever come across the excerpts from the novel which
> appeared in magazines? Were they excerpts or self-contained pieces (a
> la Under the Rose) which were rejigged to be worked into COL49. I just
> can't imagine The Shrink Flips as a particularly engaging short story
> if it was intended to be read as a stand-alone (assuming it maintains
> a fair degree of faithfulness to that chapter in the novel).
>
> Also, to expand upon Oedipa's horse metaphor mentioned earlier, her
> whole experience of the freeway system is prescient of the kind of
> writing done on freeways by later academics. The best (and classic)
> article on this is
>
> Morse, Margaret: An Ontology of Everyday Distraction: The Freeway, the
> Mall and Television. Patricia Mellencamp (ed.), Logics of Television.
> Indiana University Press 1990.
>
> Which does some very appropriate comparison work between, that's
> right, the Freeway, the Mall and Television, all of which get some
> nice treatment in TRP's bits and pieces. I'm reminded of the fantastic
> section near the end of Vineland we read of a black-clad and
> be-rollerskated Prairie and gang of teen cohorts staging a high-action
> raid on a mall.
>
> Anyway, Morse's argument is that all three situations create a kind of
> 'non-space' or 'de-realised space', particular to postmodernity in the
> West (and the US especially)...San Narciso it would seem is a huge
> expanse of non-space (if that's not a contradiction) where all of
> Oedipa's relationships are more virtual than real.
>
> Also, how much of Oedipa's inability to connect with anything in San
> Narciso is Modernist remnant re: alienation. I don't think that the
> sense of wandering around in a wasteland began in 1965. I'd argue that
> lots of common folk knew about it. But I haven't got any facts to
> prove it.
>  >From: jbor
> >To:
> >Subject: Re: correcting typo RE: col49 2 pt2
> >Date: Thu, 09 Aug 2001 08:31:15 +1000
> >
> >Actually, excerpts from the novel were published in _Esquire_,in
> December
> >1965, and _Cavalier_ in March 1966. I suspect that the latter excerpt
> at
> >least, entitled 'The Shrink Flips', includes the LSD references which
> are in
> >the novel. Of course, as many have been pointing out, the use of LSD
> and
> >other hallucinogens in a range of contexts, including psychotherapy
> and
> >experimental medical research (on housewives, among a cross-section
> of other
> >subjects, I would assume), was widespread in the U.S. during the
> early 60s,
> >and much had already been written about it, in fiction and
> non-fiction works
> >with which Pynchon would have been quite familiar.
> >
> >John's point about Oedipa using the heroin metaphor (16), is more
> >interesting to ponder. Oedipa had been to college, perceives herself
> as
> >well-informed and somewhat "hip", or post-hip at least, I think. I
> wonder
> >when the use of the word "horse" for heroin originated? What's
> striking to
> >me is Oedipa's (and the narrator's?) apparent ambivalence towards
> heroin and
> >heroin addiction. The way the image is generated is just so mundane
> and
> >matter-of-fact, but what it points to is the way that the modern --
> or
> >*postmodern* -- urban landscape is like some surreal or nightmarish
> >apparition.
> >
> >best
> >
> >
> >on 8/8/01 2:57 AM, Doug Millison at DMillison at ftmg.net wrote:
> >
> > > My typographical error in the previous message. COL49 was
> published in May
> > > 1967, still in advance of the Summer of Love that brought the
> hippies and
> > > LSD international publicity and catapulted them out of their
> fringe
> > > sub-culture status.
> >
>
>
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