Atdtda23: [46.4] Thinking of, 659

[Michael Bailey]

Beatrice in the referenced passage is a pet name that chemist
Alexander Shulgin (holder of one of the very few DEA "licenses
to thrill" people with drugs of his own making -
proving something worth harping on for a second: that there
is a level of competence and respect that one can earn which
will entitle one to do things that might ordinarily be prohibited -
even in our society, even in the eyes of the "dully constipated
authorities" as a rebellious person might put it)
used to refer to one of the phenylethylamines in his book PIHKAL
("Phenylethylamines I Have Known and Loved") -
a great big tome that I bought and read the "liberal arts"
part of - ie, the biographical info and the love story told
by the man & woman -
then flipped through the pages where he tells how to
make all those things ("take 200 grams of phen,
4 grams of yl, 32 grams of eth, a pinch of ylam, and a dash of ine -
mix them carefully in a beaker, over a Bunsen burner, under a fume hood,
till they crystallize and turn yellow, put them in a thermos full of
ice and shake constantly for 48 hours, serve in parfait dishes...")

Really an interesting book, probably more so if my knowledge
of chemistry wasn't quite so Trobriand-Islander-ish...

"Benny Profane" was reviewing that book.
Somebody on p-list at the time copied it to the list.

a) why were you searching waste archive for Beatrice?
Probably in another connection - continuing the
biographical approach?
Anyway, I think I get that the PIHKAL drug references lead
to thoughts of Oneirine's effects, which include a knowledge of
being haunted...and this in turn relates to
Paul's cite from AtD of 2 instances in which a character
is seen to recognize someone in a generic way,
without actually being able to conjure any specifics --
and that *is* kind of spooky, when you think about it!

b) George M Pynchon - I keep reading that and thinking
George M Cohan.  Well there was a showbiz connection...

c) Beatrice then would be of the generation coeval
with Dittany Vibe? And, I guess, Dally?
(rather than, say, Edwarda?)

though Robin seems to have taken a hiatus, please share more of the
research you seem to be doing if that is congenial for you...

thanks!  Mike B

"you've got to have snap or the clock's not wound" - Snap



On 12/21/07, grladams at teleport.com <grladams at teleport.com> wrote:
> These hauntings -- so weird. I typed in Beatrice into the waste archive,
> and reached this (below) as the first result. According to the 1900 Census
> George M Pynchon Sr's first wife was Lillian, who was born in Illinois.
> They were married and living in Chicago, while he was 37 & she was 29 years
> old. They had one daughter, Beatrix who was Later spelled Beatrice, in
> 1924, (Just for context, OBA's father would have been ~17 years old) there
> is record of a transatlantic ocean trip where all three travelled together
> from Southampton England, to New York. George Sr was 62, George Jr was 21,
> Beatrice was 26. Featured in numerous social and charity register type
> articles, she was a bright light of a person indeed, loved by many. She'd
> see her brother George Jr, and her someday to be husband Stafford Hendrix
> who had fought in WWI, die young and tragic deaths.
>
> http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9312&msg=159&keywords=beatri
> ce
> Review of PIHKAL, Tyrone Slothrop
>
> Because analogies with the ghost-life exist, this recurrence
> phenomenon is known, in the jargon, as `haunting.'  Whereas other sorts of
> hallucinations tend to flow by, related in deep ways that aren't accessible
> to the casual dopefiend, these Oneirine hauntings show a definite narrative
> continuity, as clearly as, say, the average Reader's Digest article.  Often
> they are so ordinary, so conventional - Jeaach calls them `the dullest
> hallucinations known to psychopharmacology' - that they are only recognized
> as hauntings through some radical though plausible violation of possibility:
> the presence of the dead, journeys by the same route and means where one
> person will set out later but arrive earlier, a printed diagram which no
> amount of light will make readable.  ...On recognizing that he is being
> haunted, the subject enters immediately into `phase two,' which, though
> varying in intensity from subject to subject, is always disagreeable: often
> sedation (0.6 mg atropine subcut.) will be necessary, even though Oneirine
> is classified as a CNS depressant.
>
>
>
>
> Original Message:
> -----------------
> From: Paul Nightingale isread at btinternet.com
> Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 05:15:44 -0000
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: Atdtda23: [46.4] Thinking of, 659
>
>
> 659.36-37] "What could you have been thinking?" he inquired. It was a voice
> Reef had not heard before but recognised nonetheless.
>
> Cf. Lew's Bomber-related experience on 240-241:
>
> Pinned to a cork board on the wall Lew saw a photograph of a shadowy figure
> in white with a cricketer's bag, posed against one of those noteworthy
> arrays of cloud the Headingly ground was known for. The face was blurred,
> but Lew took a few steps back till it came more in focus.
>
> "You recognise him?"
>
> "No ... thought for a minute I might."
>
> "You recognise him." Slyly nodding as if to himself.
>
>
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-- 
"Taste the stainless blade of liberalism, Stalinist swine!" - Phineas Freak