col 49: who's mad?

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

[re-posting, from yesterday] 

jbor schrieb:

> In _Lot 49_ what do you make of Hilarius renouncing the LSD experiments
> altogether?
>
>     "Cherish it!" cried Hilarius, fiercely. "What else do any of you have?
>     Hold it tightly by its little tentacle, don't let the Freudians coax
>     it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you. Whatever it is, hold it
>     dear, for when you lose it you go over by that much to the others. You
>     begin to cease to be." (95-6)

> It doesn't sound to me like the vengeful and unrepentant cry of an evil Nazi
> scientist in willing cahoots with the C.I.A. trying to brainwash everyone
> for fun and/or profit. It sounds to me more like Hilarius has tried to
> "atone" and serve his "penance" for his involvement in war crimes by working
> for the U.S. Establishment, trying to contribute to society, doing what he
> is told or expected to do, but that what he is engaged in in the community
> hospital-sponsored experiment is against his personal and professional
> beliefs and judgement. I'd be interested to hear what you think.


  could be. but perhaps trp simply mixed up different motifs and then didn't 
  manage to give consistency to the character? according to my impression, the 
  hilarius issue is taken up again in gr, but here the technocratic hardcore 
  scientist is one figure (pointsman), and the mad black gnostic another 
  (blicero). this works much better! in my opinion, that is. yet the message   
  for oedipa is also important. as eddins, who's not always wrong, writes in   
  "gnostic pynchon" on page 103: "although he has been more or less destroyed by 
  the demonic fantasies he tried to suppress, hilarius has discovered the value 
  of fantasy on the one hand and the danger of absolute suppression on the   
  other. he reads, like a good blakean, a normative lesson into his extreme   
  experiences. his warning to oedipa to 'cherish' her fantasy and to protect it 
  against 'freudians' and 'pharmacists' is in effect a warning to preserve her  
  private sense of the transcendental from the mania for a monistic   
  materialism". it definitely is. cheers! kai frederik --- ps: by the way, rob, 
  did you ever see this nice naughty deneuve photo by helmut newton, paris 1976? 
  guess you would like it ...