Psychedelic Favorites

[Robin Landseadel]

On Aug 6, 2009, at 5:50 PM, Dave Monroe wrote:

> "... the psychedelic favorites green and magenta ..." (IV, Ch. 1, p.  
> 14)
>
> Cf. ...
>
> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0708&msg=120718
>
> From N. Katherine Hayles and Mary B. Eiser, "Coloring Gravity's
> Rainbow,"  Pynchon Notes 16 (Spring 1985): 3-24:
>
>   "Slothrop's identification with purple and green may indicate that
> he is being transformed into a projected image, because these colors
> habitually occur in relation to filmed or hallucinated images.... the
> purple/green pairing indicates that Slothrop, like a cinematic image,
> is receding from us through increasing layers of mediation." (p. 17)
>
> http://www.ham.muohio.edu/~krafftjm/pn/pn016.pdf
>
> And do note, of course ...
>
> http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/CoverImagePopup/0,,9781594202247,00.html
>
> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0907&msg=137147
>
> There may be more G 'n' M in IV than in GR, even ...

The real target in GR was the Orpheus Theater in L.A in the early 70's.

Seriously—all these Gnostic breakthroughs in the lives of Pynchon's  
characters make so much more sense in the context of the Brotherhood  
of Eternal Love than in the context of Peenemunde, though—knowing it  
must only be the chemicals—those experiences  on Acid are more likely  
to be written off.

A lot of the "weightlessness" of Inherent Vice is due to genre  
convention: In a Philip Marlowe novel, the hero always survives,  
always sadder, always having lost something that mattered by the end  
of the novel. In many Pynchon novels, characters often just disappear  
or lose everything.