Counterflying on the Pynchon drug 'connection"

[Chris Broderick]

Mark Kohut:
     Do we really think that beautiful, lyrically relentless and incredible 
     to-the limit comic prose of  GR was written while his mind was 
     'on drugs"?.....

So I sez:

Pynchon as much as admits it in his intro to Slow Learner, where he refers to Marijuana as a "useful substance."

That said, I don't think that one can clearly say that Pynchon's writing is categorically pro-drug.  In M&D, one can see the gradual transition of caffeine from an engine of revolution to an engine of capitalism.  In AtD, Lew's cyclomite use (abuse?) is not without its perils.  And of course, one of TRPs best known acid-trippy passages is Slothrop's sodium-pentothal induced journey through the toilets.  A Leary-style prosletyzer he ain't.

-Chris
 
Chris Broderick
www.myspace.com/christophermichaelbroderick
 
"Silence is so accurate."
-Mark Rothko


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