Ch 14 306-315 revisited

[Mark Kohut]

Laura,

O'ertopping yourself......great "everything is connected" thematic post, imho.....a burrowing into.............

Mark



----- Original Message ----
From: "kelber at mindspring.com" <kelber at mindspring.com>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Wednesday, April 1, 2009 2:19:45 PM
Subject: Re: Ch 14 306-315 revisited

Mucho's nose surgery is an odd echo of Esther's nose-job sequence in V.  Also some resemblance to Weed Atman at the dentist and Slothrop being put under by Pointsman et al.  Maybe TRP's subliminally reliving his own painful time in the dental chair, but there's also kind of a fascist metaphor going on.  What we've been discussing about the fascist police state vs. passive anti-fascist druggies kind of comes to mind.  Much, Weed, Esther and Slothrop are all in a drugged state when they're set upon by THEM.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>

>
>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.
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