_Foreword_ : opium; trust; Hitler; Pavlov; helicopters; Rilke

[pynchonoid]

Many of you have requested that I repost some of the
notes I posted earlier, so they won't get lost in the
shuffle as a couple of folks  continue to mailbomb the
discussion of Pynchon's Foreword to _1984_. 


Opium

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."   

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; the opium that
Franklin shows Dixon how to mix up in a generic
equivalent of an expensive patent medicine, for
example; or, the way the American colonists come in
and set up commerce in the local locoweed). 

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. 

On trusting novelists

Pynchon *might* be seen to enter the debate about the
sincerity of his SLSL Intro where he discusses his
early influences, when he says, in his Foreword to
_1984_, "Well, of course novelists should not be
altogether trusted as to the sources of their
inspiration."

I think he's playing with a more general sense of
"novelists should not be altogether trusted", too, as
he plays coy with readers who have spent much time and
effort trying to figure out how to take what Pynchon
says in his novels, stories, essays, book support
quotes, letters, Ford Foundation grant applications,
etc.

General Pynchonalia

Where does one text end and another begin, moving out
from the Foreword into the current events Pynchon
points to, into Pynchon's other novels? 


Hitler
Why mention Hitler's "unconventional sexual tastes" in
the
Foreword if not to point to Gravity's Rainbow? with
its WWII setting and sexual material, and the echoes
of same in Vineland).  

Pavlov
Pynchon creates an opportunity to
mention Pavlov's dogs -- gratuitous in this context
unless it's taken as one of the many pointers to other
Pynchon works, in this case GR.

Helicopters
Pynchon brings in "helicopters as a resource of 'law
enforcement'
familiar to us from countless televised 'crime
dramas'" -- not to mention, the helicopter in
Vineland, or the way crime dramas
themselves work as elements in Vineland. 

Rilke

Pynchon finds a way to drag Rilke in:
 "beauty as Rilke defined it, the onset of
terror just able to be borne" and forges another link
to GR. 





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