VLVL The Wayvones; drugs

[jbor]

on 11/10/03 1:14 AM, Otto wrote:

> We all know the history of the mafia, which had become powerful through
> prohibition, from all those great movies, but what
> has become of the heirs? And why has been especially the American society so
> receptive to mafiotic structures? Strictly neo-liberal economies and
> prohibition that enabled huge profits?

The connections in Pynchon's text run both ways, however, back to Zoyd and
Van Meter: "Zoyd had played a few mob weddings in his career" (21.9), and
recall how it's Zoyd who sets up Isaiah with the gig (20-21); and he, Van
Meter and Ralph Wayvone Jr (and Hector as well, for that matter) are all
pretty simpatico with one another (9-10).

And DL is a close friend of Ralph Sr and his family too, and she and Takeshi
have done business with him in the past. While Ralph Sr admits to being
"copacetic" with the "Republican Justice Department" -- though not with
Brock Vond apparently -- he's obviously equally "copacetic" with DL and
Takeshi (102-3). 

DL "objected philosophically to all drugs" (101.10), so the narrator tells
us, and this aligns her with Hector, if not Brock also. She tells Prairie
that Takeshi "[t]akes a lot of speed, gets grandiose" (100.27-8), and it's
interesting that we see Isaiah "snorting a couple of lines" (104.2-3) with
Meathook in this chapter too.

> Ralph junior's comparison with The Royals isn't that bad, like the case
> of Prince Charles seems to indicate the heir by birth isn't necessarily
> the best man for the job, the basic structural error of feudal systems:
> 
> "His kids -- well, there was still time, time would tell." (93.10-11)

Ralph Snr is pretty dismissive of his son's simplistic comparison to the
British monarchy, however. What "the corporation that owned them" is exactly
isn't explained, but it's pretty clearly the Mob, isn't it? The "Family"
with a capital "F", as opposed to the Wayvone "family"? (93-4)

best