Everybody Must Get Stoned

[John Carvill]

> David M:
> I think we're just quibbling here.

Well, not so much quibbling, as spinning the question round until we
find an angle that fits.

<< I think his experimental writing might
extend to trying to do so while stoned or tripping.  But I don't
believe he did so exclusively or predominantly... >>

Yes, I agree, that's really what I meant. Get stoned (or trip), have
thoughts or visions, then write them down later. And probably he did
experiment with actually writing while under the influence of pot
and/or LSD. But you can be reasonably sure that any passages he did
write in that state, he had to edit and/or re-write later.

All I was saying was that any suggestion that GR was written, as you
say, "exclusively or predominantly" whilst stoned or tripping, must
surely seem unlikely.

<< Joe:
Interesting note: this is the second time today that we're
communicating in two different media and somehow referencing the
Beatles in both. I left Magical Mystery Tour on, by the way. The word
is "know". >>

I know. What Joe is referring to is my recent discovery that 'Penny
Lane' does *not* begin thus:

"In Penny Lane there is a barber showing photographs
 Of every head he's had the pleasure to have known"

Like this blogger...

http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2009/12/the-deceiving-ear.html

...I had seen the line quoted in the Guardian as "every head he's had
the pleasure to know", and thought they'd got it wrong. They hadn't.

<< Actually, this is the sort of thing that I did routinely during my
tripping days. Operating the hi-fi, I mean. Not writing GR. >>

Me too, and sometimes it took a lot longer than it should have to do
simple things.

<< But let's think about what is meant by "while writing". During the
time, say a year, that one is working on a lengthy book one could say
"I was writing that book that year."  If that person goes to a party
and smokes a joint during that year is he still writing the book at
that moment?

I'd say "Yes". >>

Well, I'd say 'yes' too, I suppose. But then I could say that "I
learned to drive whilst stoned" or some such.

Anyone who tried to claim that Pynchon never touched a joint while
writing GR would have a hell of a problem making that stick. But I
just think it sort of trivialises GR to say, oh, Pynchon wrote that
while he was stoned. That one line in Jules's article has fuelled a
lot of misconceptions, in my view.

And I guess that ties in with my continuing refusal to accept the idea
that Doc is stoned all the time.