Counterflying on the Pynchon drug 'connection"
Bryan Snyder
wilsonistrey at gmail.com
Sat Jun 16 01:29:22 CDT 2007
Lol... I have no idea.
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of robinlandseadel at comcast.net
Sent: Saturday, June 16, 2007 12:09 AM
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: RE: Counterflying on the Pynchon drug 'connection"
Do you have any idea how much of Beethoven's "Late Period" was aided/abbeted
by Laudenum?
-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "Bryan Snyder" <wilsonistrey at gmail.com>
> Just playing Devil's boring Advocate but.
>
>
>
>
>
> You do realize how many songs were written under the influence of all
> the drugs imaginable that are enjoyed by those who are very
anti-intoxication?
> I mean. to answer your question better I think:
>
>
>
> I think the answer (as it is in MANY cases in life I think) is BOTH.
>
>
>
> I think some parts were very sober and some parts were not. obviously
> both sober and drug induced writing is edited, rearranged, parts moved
> into other parts. all amalgamated by a total master of diction and style .
>
>
>
>
>
> I think that happens a LOT, in all art.
>
>
>
> That's all.
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>
>
> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
> Behalf Of Mark Kohut
> Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2007 4:28 AM
> To: pynchon -l; Pete Cleland
> Subject: Counterflying on the Pynchon drug 'connection"
>
>
>
> All---
>
>
>
> As I have posted, I think TRP was working harder than
>
> ever during the 17 years between published books.
>
>
>
> A-and, I also believe with much less circumstantial evidence
>
> that whatever drug use TRP practiced, I am willing to bet it
>
> was much less than even the average and never came close
>
> to messing up his mind and had nothing to do with the 'missing'
>
> 17 years.
>
>
>
> Why? Just a judgment call but.....the guy is incredibly disciplined,
>
> it seems, writing incredibly rich and allusive books by hand on graph
>
> paper, revising, revising, fact-checking, or not revising and getting
> it mostly
>
> right in the writing line by line but still fact-checking [see Slow
> Learner] and
>
> reading, reading and absorbing into his vision everything he goes
> after intellectually,
>
> encrypting it into those poetic structures of novels, learning
> languages and
>
> the slang thereof! and thinking hard and long and thinking some more
> every
>
> minute while he writes, borrowing The Heavenly City of the 18th
> Century Philosophers
>
> from Ian McEwan and folding THAT into M & D.....and, yes, I would bet
> on at least
>
> one acid trip or a couple-three but I would also bet that the
> intensity of GR and the
>
> depth and beauty of other books (or parts thereof) were written in
> full undrugged
>
> consciousness...... I still wonder whether all of the coffee-drinking
> in M & D is supposed
>
> to be a good or bad thing----compared to tea.
>
>
>
> A good lit scholar/critic, Lionel Trilling, I think, once wrote an
> essay on the fact that
>
> many of the greatest American writers, Faulkner, fitzgerald, others,
> were ...alcoholics
>
> or at least drunk a lot of the time. He "showed" that however much
> that was part of their
>
> characters, they could not write that way and didn't.
>
>
>
> 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"?.....
>
>
>
> I don't.
>
>
>
> Just Say No,
>
> MK
>
>
>
> _____
>
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