VLVL Count Drugula, or Mucho the Munificent

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Friday, April 02, 2004 3:26 PM
Subject: Re: VLVL Count Drugula, or Mucho the Munificent
>
> > the "beer and tobacco headache" which isn't typical for a dope smoker.
>
> Unless it's a case of too much tobacco in the mix. I don't think you can
> realistically argue against the fact that there are drugs and wild parties
> at the commune,

I admit that it's been the reality in those that these communes had become
the dope Safeway's for the freaks living in the cities.

I don't argue that there are no wild parties and drugs. We're told about
wild parties with a lot of beer and tobacco, but no word of dope, acid or
sex orgies here. Your "drug commune" is still speculation. My thought was
that the "beer and tobacco headache" doesn't fit very well into the
description of a typical "drug commune," as you've called the place.

> and it's also clear that Zoyd scores pretty soon after being
> released from gaol and picking up Prairie, whether it's in the
> VW Kombi or at the commune, and that it's a high priority for him.

Of course it's a high priority for him, it's the drug of his choice as a
more or less free human being. And smoking dope back in those days
had a lot to with the rejection of the official policies in general.
Remember that not the fact that Zoyd is a smoker gets him into trouble.
He's got jobs & is able to take care for himself, even can take the
responsibility for a child. What gets him into trouble fifteen years after
Frenesi has left him are the actions of a criminal, fascist bastard who is
backed by a criminal government which is committing some genocide in
Asia at the same time.

My point is that the 60's drug culture partly was a reaction to these
political circumstances too, and if you forget this as a general
background you're inevitably misreading the novel.

> NB also that he's pretty tight with his dope, is Zoyd.
>

I simply assume that he expects better stuff at Mucho's guest
rooms than he's got himself.

> I don't think that the text presents a wholehearted endorsement
> of marijuana and LSD --

Right, no word of endorsement in the text. No responsible author would
do that. Prairie is critical of Zoyd's habit, but she doesn't seem to
realize that her boyfriend is on a much more dangerous trip having started
taking cocaine.

> as some glorious pathway to divinity or as miracle cures, for
> example --

It's Zoyd who is thinking about metaphysics at Prairie's birth. His question
is serious, even if his idea is naive. And I think we agree about a certain
amount of naivete within the sixties movement. It's been surely naive to
believe in fighting successfully against the military industrial complex
with
the slogan of love & peace. Pynchon had said it in GR already:

"AN ARMY OF LOVERS CAN BE BEATEN" (155)

> however, I agree that the use of these drugs, and those who use
> them, are not totally vilified

How should our author do that given his personal history? He isn't Mucho.

> (though users are ridiculed at several
> points in the text).

Well, admitted, Van Meter seems to be a little stupid. But who's a user?
A user, an addict of what? Of beer, booze, grass, acid, valium, the tube,
women, the Dow Jones, power?

Zoyd's reaction to the grass monolith is very witty although he knows that
he's in real trouble.

The clean Mucho is much more ridiculous than the "Head of Heads" has been.

The text I'd quoted from p. 311-12 makes clear that the author shares the
opinion of every reasonable, non-puritan person that the war on drugs did
more harm than good, that it's highly hypocritical given the fact that the
nation is on beer & booze and lung cancer is a common cause of death.
And the war on drugs began because of psychopathic people like
Harry Anslinger. Like the novel-character Brock Vond that guy has really
fucked-up people. Zoyd is aware of all this, that in insisting on his right
to smoke he's defending the civil rights laid down in the constitution.

> But by the same token I don't see the recap of Mucho's career
> and life as some Puritanical rant against cocaine usage either. Pynchon
> doesn't set up a binary opposition of "bad" drugs vs "good" drugs in this
> text, as you're trying to suggest,

I did not try to suggest that P. is talking of "good" or "bad" drugs. But
with this he shows that he's aware that there are differences between drugs
and that the pure term "war on drugs" as it is used is misleading and
hypocritical.

The real dangers of cocaine are described quite clear in the text. Sooner or
later you will become an addict to a drug that definitely will ruin your
social status, if your nose doesn't save you before - at least that's been
the case in the days before crack. Mucho just gets on another trip after
signing that Faustian pact. He's an eccentric, he had lost touch with
reality long ago.

> and I think there's somewhat more
> ambivalence (on this issue as on most other aspects of the text as well)
> than you allow.
>
> best

I have the impression that you don't get my points very well. I just don't
share your over-critical view of the subculture that you read into the
novel since the reading has started. I've never denied Pynchon's critical
view of the 60's counterculture (political or hedonistic, but in the puritan
America of the sixties hedonism was political), but I see him smiling when
he wrote it. Compared to the reality of the Sixties he could've been much
more malignant in writing about the SDS, Weathermen, Black Panther,
Feminists and Hippies.

Otto