pynchon-l-digest V2 #4889

[david christensen]

On 10/16/06, Daniel Julius <daniel.julius at gmail.com> wrote:
> David,
>
> I don't think Wallace wants you to extinguish yr joint.  I know I don't.
I
> read the other David's account of AA and NA in _Jest_ not as a cautionary
> tale, a "reader: don't smoke big-bad weed cause it'll make you drool like
> Hal," but as a really very dark and pessimistic extension of a greater
> point -- that everything is essentially addictive.  That external stimuli
as
> innocent as tennis or rock music or whatever cause chemical changes in yr
> brain, just like coke or heroin or Tylenol or anything else does, and that
> drugs are just one of the many distractions modern people often turn to to
> remind themselves to forget either their own mortality, or boredom, or
> loneliness, or anhedonia or whatever psychically ails you, but ultimately,
> to forget those nasty little truths lurking around our brains all the time
> (if, that is, yer naturally depressive, which, you know, who isn't?).
>
> Hal thinks (and I can hear all you fuckers groaning right now) that
> "it...lately sometimes seemed like a kind of black miracle...that people
> could actually care deeply about a subject or pursuit, and could go on
> caring this way for years on end.  Could dedicate their entire lives to
it.
> It seemed admirable and at the same time pathetic" (900), and it's also, I
> believe, inevitable.  Weed, God, Satan, Ween, The Grateful Dead, "politics
> or grammar, topology or philately" (900), codeine, P-lists, Wallace lists,
> or work, or anything: choose your distraction.  _Jest_ isn't Reefer
Madness
> propaganda, it's a profound empathetic gesture to the reader that says "I
> know how you feel, modern human being; a lot of us feel the same way right
> now."
>
> IMO, anyway.  I just really like that damn book.


Great post. I smoked weed a lot when I was playing in bands. One
particularly because the drummer was a grower and used to give it to me. It
is fine for a while. I am not saying you have needed to be a dope smoker to
get the whole Hal thing but I believe it helps. Well helps for understanding
the whole weed experience. It can be amazingly silly and fun in a situation
and also awful and indeed paranoic.
>
> --
.