Atdtda23: [46.4] Thinking of, 659

Sat Dec 22 21:31:07 CST 2007

Michael, et. al.,

Caveat: this may not be useful for further explorations, but it is at least 
tangentially relevant.

Michael--you write that you have a tome, PHIKAL, by and about Alexander and 
Ann Shulgin. In a book titled "Voices from the Edge," (by David Jay Brown 
and Rebecca McClen Novik),* there is an interview with the Shuglins. It is 
quite revealing and fascinating, and I am sure much shorter than PHIKAL.

According to the interview, the Shulins have made hundreds of psychotropic 
drugs. Good next door neighbours.

*  http://www.levity.com/mavericks/frames12.htm

You have to search through the site (starting with another book, "Mavericks 
of the Mind") to find the interviews, a page just after the amazon.com page.

Page

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Bailey" <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
To: "Pynchon-l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Friday, December 21, 2007 11:08 PM
Subject: Re: Atdtda23: [46.4] Thinking of, 659

> 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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