Ch 14 306-315 revisited

[Joseph Tracy]

Limited response on this part of the chapter though the drug stuff  
was worthwhile, thought Id repost  the summary( with revisions) to  
review the pages for any other thoughts. By tonight/tomorrow I will  
try to summarize the last part of the Chapter and  put out a few  
final thoughts.

Continuing Summary of Ch 14  pages 306-315  with  notes questions

Zoyd and Prairies take off on their trip to Vineland, picked up by VW  
bus and taken to commune of mostly people trying to stay off screen  
from police. It’s located in Sacramento delta military area and  
clearly corresponds to Mclellan Air force Base and Air materials  
complex. It is a nasty place, noisy with nasty chemical smells. ( It  
has since closed and along with Rancho Seco is one more ugly toxic  
mess left behind by military industrial complex.) ( There is  
something weird, in California especially, where some people seem to  
have adapted to extreme noise  from air and road traffic; you see  
multi-million dollar houses right next to 6 lane freeways: and there  
is something extra jarring about hippie types finding refuge in this  
hellish place. It seems a symbol of the more tragic directions of the  
counterculture movement.)

Couple days in hell  is all Z&P can take and they head to SF to  
mansion of Wendell Mucho Maas( COL 49); they are taken in by young  
longhaired babe named Trillium( a common wild lily with 3 petals.)  
who takes Prairie in her arms to baby’s delight, guides them through  
mansion, rooms with high end analog stereos, Pinball machines, black  
lights, psychedelia, TVs.  Trillium leaves for 'Paranoids' concert  
and Zoyd feeds Prairie & sings to her “Lawrence of Arabia” with his  
wig, wag, woggledy doo!, then settles in to watch Woody Allen’s  
imaginary “Young Kissinger”. I love these moments of low intensity  
comic relief surrounded by the detritus of some nook of western  
culture that feel so true to life.

We get a brief history of Mucho Maas from DJ to divorce to Record  
Producer/Count Drugula ( Nice reference back to Count Chocula Cereal  
on first page of VL) who then goes on Coke binge, ends in office of  
Dr. Hugo Splanchnik, rhinologist who takes him through dreaded and  
funny Room of Bottled Specimens (of cocaine users’ brains and noses)   
and compels Maas to sign in blood an agreement to forgo Coke or be  
subject to extreme penalties before repairing Mucho’s nose. Mucho  
then became a prophet of the Natch. Somewhere in here Maas returns in  
real time to mansion though the transition s here are like smoke.

We visit a comic memory of the encounter between Maas and Hector Z  
( “Hey my man with the reverse chic shoes”)  and then move to a  
consideration of the social impact of LSD "revealing" to takers the  
unreality of death   and the danger of that notion to the State. They  
part after a listen to the “sermon” of  the Best Sam Cooke V. 1&2.
Zoyd and Prairie  wait at bus station Prairie sitting on Pinball  
machine, then head north across the Golden Gate which OBA describes  
as “a transition in the metaphysics of the area”

On to the land of Fog and “fiss”

Notes:
Count Drugula gets his cape n paraphernalia from Z&Z. Connection to  
Zoyd Zuniga ? role of letter Z as zed?  end, terminus of loss? End of  
the alphabetic line?

Prairie and Frenesi both have thing with Pinball machines. What’s up  
there?

Is there a pattern to the journey? From beach house  to Sasha’s   
Hollywood  suburb,  from Cops  to military hell, to ex druggie on the  
natch to VL?
transition from  weed to LSD to Coke to natch

more notes /questions later

Thoughts on the revelatory power of hallucinogens? What is TRP  
getting at?

There is  a stretch now from Santa Rosa to Portland that is seriously  
isolated from  California culture and is rather unique in US  
culture.  Other areas like this? I like that Pynchon makes note of  
this phenomena.  The transition often seems quite palpable.