VLVL The Wayvones; drugs

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 11, 2003 3:24 AM
Subject: Re: VLVL The Wayvones; drugs


> 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).
>

For me it's pretty clear that it isn't the drug but the prosecution that is
the problem.

It is obvious that this war on drugs is just a fake, it only justifies the
wages of federal agents and narcs who've got no reason for feeling morally
superior. What we get is the drug chain from the simple user and small
dealer up to the highest levels of society. The sixties and seventies have
repeated the story of the thirties when prohibition did nothing but turning
the mafia into a real big, wealthy and powerful organisation. But the real
profits aren't made with grass -- which can be home-grown quite easily
(Kerouac and Cassidy already did it) -- huge profits are only made through
heroin, cocaine and synthetical drugs. Therefore I say Hector's a fool for
chasing harmless hippies, turning fools like Van Meter into snitches and
paving the way for the really dangerous stuff and for organized crime to
gain ground.

The undifferentiated attitude towards illegal drugs only enabled contacts
between the more or less harmless hippie culture of the sixties and the
organized crime which had been there for decades. I really look at Zoyd more
critical than for any other thing he does in the novel for sending Isaiah
(and Prairie) to this Italian wedding while everybody knows what kind of
Italian "family" this is. But maybe he thinks she'll be safe from Brock
there because the Wayvones are big players like Brock.

> 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).
>

Right, even with the "Republican Justice Department," that government agency
whose task it should be to protect ordinary citizens from this kind of
organized crime.

> 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.
>

Indeed it seems to be a result of the "war on drugs" that the spreading of
much more dangerous drugs (heroin, speed and cocaine, all pretty addictive)
has been enabled and made profitable by the marijuana-prohibition.

Hector isn't against all drugs, he's a tube-addict, and I bet he likes a
booze every once in a while. No word of a puritan clean living. Drugs are
part of the human culture for thousands of years, so the idea of a drug-free
society while alcohol and tobacco-advertisement is legal is absolutely
unrealistic. If anybody proposes this I ask myself what kind of profit he
makes from the prohibition.

Brock is an employee of the Justice Department, his war on drugs is only a
way to gain power, to make his career. His budget is part of the Justice
Department's budget. He's lying, cheating, blackmailing, destroying families
and people's lives -- more of the kind of those old gangsters Ralph Snr is
thinking of.

I wonder what Prairie, who's critical of her father's smoking habit, might
say about the cocaine or speed use (we're not told what exactly Isaiah and
Meathook are snorting, in every case it's nothing a young mind should be
wasted upon) of her boyfriend. That getting "grandiose" is an inevitable
result of speed and cocaine. Prairie doesn't like even beer (101.9-10) and
given her critical attitude towards Zoyd's reefer madness I suppose she's
not taking any drugs because of her father's example.

> > 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
>
>

Indeed it is obvious that the legal branches of the Wayvone's enterprises
(like the Cucumber Lounge) are just camouflage and that everybody knows
this. It throws a light on how deeply the mafia cancer has grown into
society.

Brecht's "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui" (1941) comes to mind:

"Fascism is in the nature of capitalism and is born from capitalist property
relations. This is, succinctly, the mechanism presented by the author for
the coming to power of fascism."
http://revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv4n2/brecht.htm

Otto