VLVL2(3): Van Meter

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Morris"
To: "Dave Monroe"
Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2003 10:48 PM
Subject: Re: VLVL2(3): Van Meter

>
> --- Dave Monroe wrote:
> > Haven't read any RAW
>
> You haven't missed a whole lot.
>
> David Morris
>

>From the Dealey Plaza to Watergate . . . to Arcachon

David, I think the first trilogy (_The Eye in the Pyramid, The Golden Apple,
Leviathan_) is well worth reading. Read it back in '79 lying naked on the
French Atlantic beaches, and it's at least funny and *entertaining* (had to
turn from the back to the belly every once in a while), and according to
Pynchon this is enough reason to read a book. I like it more than Umberto
Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum."

RAW had done what Pynchon had proposed on p. 588.5-6 of _GR_:
"Check out Ishmael Reed. He knows more about it than you'll ever find here."

Having done this RAW took his epigraph from _Mumbo Jumbo_, Chap. 6, p. 18:
"Someone once said that beneath all political and cultural warfare lies a
struggle between secret societies."

RAW tells about that malicious "Other Kingdom" more explicit than Pynchon
does, his Illuminati-memos in the first book of the trilogy are well done
and tell about, for example, the hemp harvest on Mount Vernon.

But RAW cannot be trusted, in an "interview" in _The Illuminati-Papers_
(1980) he claims that he had read both Reed and _GR_ after he had finished
_Illuminatus_ and the "similarities" between the books are effects of a
somewhat "higher intelligence." But it's nonsense; if it was true, if he
hadn't read Reed before how could he have used that epigraph? So if he's
obviously lying about Reed why should I buy his claim that he hadn't read
_GR_ before?  He uses SNAFU* a lot which he took from _GR_:
"A SNAFU FOR ROCKETMAN (...)." (377.35)

But I recommend _The Illuminati-Papers_ because he has some good things to
say about Stan Grof and Joyce's _Finnegan's Wake_ in a chapter called "Coex
Coex Coex." The heading refers to Grof's theory of dynamic systems of
condensed experience explained in _Realms of the Human Unconscious_ (Viking
Press, NY 1975 -- still the best you can get about LSD) and his way of
interpreting Joyce seems ok to me.

Otto

*Situation Normal All Fucked Up

Arcachon:
Europe's highest sand dune rises to some 110 m over the foam of the waves.
http://www.arcachon.com/gb/visites/bassin/bassin.htm
(slide show)