VLVL The Wayvones; drugs

[jbor]

on 12/10/03 12:17 AM, Otto at ottosell at yahoo.de wrote:

> 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.

The point the text seems to be making is that though Prairie "didn't even
like beer" and DL "objected philosophically to all drugs", they both drink a
couple of glasses of champagne anyway (102.21). Not quite hypocrisy -- the
implication is that this meeting has come as a shock to both of them -- but
certainly ironic. Prairie doesn't bat an eyelid at Isaiah "snorting a couple
of lines" with Meathook (104.1-2), and it's obviously not grass he's
snorting. And Prairie is pretty Tube-addicted, and a bit of a sugar fiend
too it seems. DL hates Brock, but she is pretty close to Ralph Snr and is so
trusted by Ralph and his cronies that she even gets to grab one of the
security guy's Uzis and belt out a tune at the wedding (104-5). She's not
worried about what you call "the mafia cancer" at all (where's it say *that*
in the text?), and she doesn't care about Ralph's accommodation with the
"Republican Justice Department" either. Her hatred and persecution of Brock
is directed towards him as an individual; it isn't a political stand at all.
And how else is an honest cop like Hector once was going to be able to find
and prosecute the main players behind the drug cartels if not via the
network of junkies and small-time dealers? And what about Hector's
get-rich-quick "movie scheme":

     ... which th' ultimate message will be that the real threat to
    America, then and now, is from th' illegal abuse of narcotics? (51-2)

Though over-long, the Johnny Depp movie _Blow_, based on a true story, might
be tangentially relevant at this point.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0221027/

Ultimately I agree with Terrance. I really can't see much connection between
most of what you've written below and Pynchon's text, however much I might
personally agree with some of your arguments.

best




> 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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