col 49: who's mad?

[Doug Millison]

Thought experiment:  if (a big if) Dr. H. is giving those concentration camp
medical atrocity victims massive doses of hallucinogenic drugs to produce
"experimentally-induced insanity" (as the CIA did with LSD in their secret
and sometimes fatal experiments) then "pulling faces" at them in that state
of mind could be a form of torture.

Pynchon does weave his references to LSD and the CIA rather suggestively
through his novels, plenty there to support all manner of interpretation and
speculation.  Readers are also well advised to study his characterizations
carefully, consider the attributes P gives them, the allusions he attaches
to them, the situations he puts them in, to try to gain a deeper
understanding of what a given character contributes to the work.  Whether it
fits the currently de rigeur academic models for literary interpretation or
not, Hollander's work, on COL49 especially, is a gold mine in this respect
-- and, of course, Hollander's work is accepted in the Pynchon scholarly
community, judging from its publication in Pynchon Notes.

P.S. Kai, you may know it already, but the Council on Spiritual Practices
publishes quite a lot of material, and pointers to more, about the use of
"entheogens" (the more recent term that many people now use instead of
"psychedelics" and "hallucinogens") at its web site.  The MAPS web site also
covers what continues to be, apparently, the underground therapeutic use of
MDMA and other entheogens by therapists, psychiatrists, and spiritual
directors in the U.S.