VLVL Mucho and "The Natch"

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2004 12:13 AM
Subject: Re: VLVL Mucho and "The Natch"

> Mucho meets up with Zoyd in "real time", referring to the day that he and
> the baby dropped by after the drug bust, sometime in 1970-1. In yet
> another
> reinvention of himself, Mucho is a born-again anti-drug crusader: "The
> Natch" (311) he preaches about is a natural high. (He preaches about it to
> the point of being "a source of rectal discomfort on the subject"; i.e.
> he's
> a pain in the ass and this is yet another example in _Vineland_ of Pynchon
> playing around with register, tone and lexis, recasting a slang expression
> in deliberately excessive formal language, trying for humour -- and
> failing miserably -- but that's a separate issue.)
>
> The conversation between Zoyd and Mucho restates in a fairly
> straightforward
> way the novel's central theme of how the 60's counterculture or "Movement"
> was co-opted (from within and without) and ultimately failed.
>
>     "They just let us forget. Give us too much to process, fill up every
>     minute, keep us distracted, it's what the Tube is for, and though it
>     kills me to say it, it's what rock and roll is becoming -- just
>     another way to claim our attention [...]"
>       "And they never forgave us." Mucho went to the stereo and put on The
>     Best of Sam Cooke, volumes 1 and 2, and then they sat together and
>     listened, both of them this time, to the sermon, one they knew and
>     felt their hearts comforted by, though outside spread the lampless
>     wastes, the unseen paybacks, the heartless power of the scabland
>     garrison state the green free America of their childhoods even then
>     was turning into. (314)
>

Which song is meant especially, which comforting message?
"What a Wonderful World This Would Be"?

The Best of Sam Cooke
http://www.geocities.com/martynb88/discbe.html

But the passage begins a little bit earlier and it's worth being quoted too.
That it's been acid that had convinced them that they never were going to
die, and that this "knowledge" has been the reason for making it illegal:

   "Well I wish it was back then, when you were the Count. Remember how the
acid was? Remember that windowpane, down in Laguna that time? God, I knew
then, I knew. . . . "
They had a look. "Uh-huh, me too. That you were never going to die. Ha! No
wonder the State panicked. How are they supposed to control a population
that knows it'll never die? When that was always their last big chip, when
they thought they had the power of life and death. But acid gave the X-ray
vision to see through that one, so of course they had to take it away from
us."
"Yeah, but they can't take what happened, what we found out."
(313-14)

Mucho disagrees to Zoyd in the part you've quoted that it won't be forgotten
what had been found out by the hippie-generation.

> It's one of the more poignant moments in the text,

It is indeed.

> and a key passage for
> some critics who try to separate the "scabland garrison state" passage
> from its context. NB that Mucho's post-mortem is echoed later by Isaiah
(373).
>

Right, another one on cocaine of course.

> Of course, Mucho himself, like the rest of the '60s crew depicted in the
> novel, has already been conspicuously implicated in the degradation and
> collapse of "the Movement". As a record producer (and drug distributor)
> he's
> one of a swag of opportunistic entrepreneurs responsible for diverting the
> "revolutionary" potential of '60s rock music and the youth culture
> associated with it by promoting (and profiting handsomely from) novelty
> acts and cheap parodies. For example:
>
> ca. 1967
>
>     The jukebox played the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane,
>     Country Joe and the Fish. [...]
>       "It's the Revolution, girl -- can't you feel it?" (117)
>

http://www.countryjoe.com/ra/fixin.ram

I think DL's impression of Frenesi is important here, that to DL she's kind
of a neglected child exposed to the dangers of the real world without
knowing it.

>     "Feels right, DL. Like we're really going to change the world
>     this time." [...] Revolution all around them, jukebox solidarity
>                                                         (118)

That's DL's impression again. She doesn't buy it from the beginning,
"it" being the revolutionary character of the movement.
Her question about "correct analysis" (118) reveals Frenesi's political
greenness:

"(...) Ever heard of that one?"
Frenesi shrugged. "Heard of it. Maybe I don't have the patience. I have to
trust the way this makes me feel."

>
> ca. 1968-9
>
>     Indolent Records had rapidly become known for its unusual choices
>     of artists and repertoires. Mucho was one of the very first to
>     audition, but not, he was later to add hastily, to call back,
>     fledgling musician Charles Manson. He almost signed Wild Man
>     Fischer, and Tiny Tim too, but others got to them first. (309)
>
> That the label did sign up Zoyd's band in "the baroque, or ripe, phase of
> L.A.'s relationship with rock and roll" when "critical abilities lapsed"
> doesn't actually say much for their music either:
>
>     For one demented season the town lost its ear, and talent was signed
>     that in other times would have kept on wandering in the desert, and
>     in what oases they found, played toilets. (283-4)
>
> best
>

At least Mucho's been interested in "unusual choices of artists
and repertoires," thus special stuff, not in producing chart-records.
Wild Man Fischer has an incredible humour. But I guess that Zoyd, like
Manson, wasn't really talented.

On the Natch:
»Die schärfsten Kritiker der Elche waren früher selber welche.«
(F.K. Waechter)

Otto