"not arresting growers, but supervising quality control"

[pynchonoid]

Pynchon chooses to focus on an interesting detail to
begin his Foreword to _1984:
"born[...] in the middle of a highly productive opium
district. His father was there working as an agent for
the British Opium Department, not arresting growers,
but supervising quality control of the product, in
which Britain had long enjoyed a monopoly."   

Aside from grabbing the attention of the high school
kids dozing in the back rows, what's this tid-bit
doing here?  (I reject the notion that Pynchon writes
"shitty" -- fq's term -- essays and assume he 
composes with care.)   Many utopian/dystopian novels
do feature drugs -- soma in  _Brave New World_  for
example -- but not _1984_, which relies instead on
totalitarian social organization, closed media
propaganda loop, and brute force to achieve social
control. 

Whatever else it does, using this
little-known-drug-history fact to begin the Foreword
also serves to place it squarely in the context of
Pynchon's past writings about drugs:  Vineland (set in
1984) with its narc-chases-hippie-dopers plot
elements, the Tube as a drug, LSD, and repetition of
the rumors about Bush's involvement in the cocaine
trade; drugs in GR, including opium specifically;
drugs in COL49; etc. 

The opium reference also recalls the way that the
current Bush Administration has co-opted the War on
Drugs (leftover from the Nixon Administration that
Pynchon savages in GR) into the never-ending War on
Terrorism (legacy of the Reagan/Bush Administration
that Pynchon critiques in Vineland).

More generally, beginning the Foreword in this way
also immediately establishes that Pynchon is using
this venue -- foreword to 1984 centennial edition --
as an opportunity to write something more general and
more contemporary than the immediate facts at hand
about the novel _1984_ and its author, an essay that
will also link at many points to Pynchon's other
writings. 




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<http://www.pynchonoid.blogspot.com/>

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