IV: potsmoking Doc SPOILER ALERT

[Tore Rye Andersen]

Thanks for that useful list, Doug (I almost wrote Doc); an impressive 
intake, all right.
 
What strikes me most about all the references to drugs in IV (except for
heroin, which is bad shit, to be avoided) is how explicit Pynchon is in
connecting the use of drugs - pot and LSD in particular - with the mindset
he has become known for. All the paranoia in IV is clearly a result
of all the pot being smoked and all the LSD being dropped. See e.g. p. 
95-96 where Doc thinks himself into a brainfreeze after smoking some of 
Fritz's good shit. Fritz warns Doc:  
 
"PIs should really stay away from drugs, all 'em alternate universes just
make the job that much more complicated."
 
- but in fact those alternate universes and the ability to see connections
help Doc solve the case (whatever the case may be), cf. his LSD-induced 
vision of Shasta on p. 109-10 which turns out to be a bona fide clue. It 
seems to me that drugs and the states of mind they induce are not so much
described as debilitating; rather, they're depicted as mostly useful tools 
in Doc's toolbox.
 
On p. 129, for instance, we learn that: "A private eye didn't drop acid for 
years in this town without picking up some kind of extrasensory chops."
On p. 117 we hear that "paranoia was a tool of the trade, it pointed you in 
directions you might not have seen to go." And on p. 318, during a PCP trip: 
"Fortunately for both Docs, over the years they had been sent out on enough 
of these unsought journeys to have picked up a useful kit of paranoid skills."
 
A-and on p. 107, Pynchon outright quotes GR in the scene with Vehi the
LSD guru:
 
"On the face of it," Vehi Fairfield said finally, "two separate worlds, each
unaware of the other. But they always connect someplace."
"Manson and the Surge of '69," said Doc.
"I'd be very surprised if they weren't connected," Vehi said.
"That's because you think everything is connected," Sortilège said.
"'Think'?"
 
Of course there is such a thing as too much pot/paranoia - brainfreezes of the
sort Doc thinks himself into on p. 121 hardly help him do his job - but a
certain amount of paranoia (caused by smoking a certain amount of weed and
dropping a certain amount of acid) is actually described as productive in IV,
like GR's "creative paranoia."
 
I may only be paranoid, but it sure seems to me that IV is not only describing
Doc's working methods, but also Pynchon's own working methods as he wrote GR.
I'm not saying that he wrote that earlier novel completely blitzed - it's much
too controlled for that, even when it goes out of control - but perhaps
something along the lines of Wordsworth's description of the origins of poetry:
not "emotion recollected in tranquility," but "pot thinking and acid trips 
recollected in tranquility." That sure would explain some of the intensity of 
GR, a novel which occasionally thinks itself into a brainfreeze.
 
PS: I reread Infinite Jest over the summer and find it very interesting to
compare Pynchon's take on marijuana with Wallace's. Pot is mostly a benign force
in IV and the rest of Pynchon, whereas it is decidedly bad news in Infinite Jest.
One of the opening scenes of IJ describes Ken Erdedy desperately waiting for his 
dealer (IJ 17-27), and of course Hal becomes severely addicted to marijuana as 
well. I've always suspected that much of Wallace's impatience with Pynchon stems 
from their vastly different perspectives on drugs. Wallace clearly had some bad 
experiences with drugs/marijuana, while it seems that Pynchon mostly just had a 
lot of fun, at least judging from his work.
 
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