LSD

[Paul Mackin]

Terrance wrote:

> I wonder about Muchos and Zoyd's conversations regarding LSD towards the
> end
>   of Vineland--re-reading it recently, I wonder if it's Pynchon's way of
>   shining a light once more on the naiveté of the 60s generation that
> LSD was
>   the quick way of learning that one wasn't going to die. The view of
> LSD in
>   Lot 49 is alot more sinister. I think Pynchon's affections for the
> wonders
>   of LSD are evident, but I think he balances that view that it could
> also
>   become another vehicle for Control, Irregardless (that word again,
> skippy)
>   of whether it's the CIA dispensing or not.
>
>   Rich
>
> I have no idea what Thomas R. Pynchon may think of LSD, but again, can
> you provide a single passage from any Pynchon text that supports the
> claim that Pynchon or Pynchon's texts evidence an affection for LSD? I
> can provide lots of passages from CL, GR, and VL, that have convinced me
> that LSD is negative in Pynchon's books.  Moreover, as you note, LSD
> represents a peter pan 1960s attitude and naiveté (Pynchon notes this
> explicitly in the Slow Learner Introduction)  and a denial of death, an
> attempt to escape  Death and thus a denial of life in Pynchon's texts.
> LSD is the drug associated with a Nazi doctor in CL.  Consider what
> happens to Mucho, he becomes an infantile sloth. In GR, LSD is THEIR
> synthetic drug and is explicitly associated with plastic, oil, control,
> the sacred rituals of THEM. In VL, it is what Zoyd and Mucho are ga ga
> nostalgic for (a big no no in all Pynchon novels) and it is said to
> provide them with an x-ray vision, but that vision is a vision of
> denial, projection and irresponsibility.
>
> irregardless is and adverb Non-Standard.
>
> It's very popular in NYC talk.
>
> ir(respective) + regardless = irregardless
> --------------------
> USAGE NOTE: The label Non-Standard does only approximate justice to the
> status of irregardless. More precisely, it is a form that many people
> mistakenly believe to be a correct usage in formal style but that in
> fact has no legitimate antecedents in either standard or nonstandard
> varieties. (The word was likely coined from a blend of irrespective and
> regardless.) Perhaps this is why critics have sometimes insisted that
> there is ?no such word? as irregardless, a charge they would not think
> of leveling at a bona fide nonstandard word such as ain't, which has an
> ancient genealogy.

Yeah, I was going to say I personally didn't object for a second to Rich's
saying irregardless. When people do something long enough it becomes OK in
my book (well, when applied to language anyway). An example of this might
be the pronunciation of the word forte meaning strength.  People now (in
English) almost universally seem to say for-tay which when musicians use it
means loud. What I hate even more is phoney word changes to comply with the
latest advancement in right thinking. Like gender to mean sex. Suppose the
practice was instigated to refer to the idea of sex divorced from
biological determination but the thing's gone far beyond that. Government
statistics now classify people by gender rather than sex. Me and my
ranting. And I'm probably completely wrong.

P.