Family in IV Re: Everbody Must Get Stoned

[Robert Jackson]

Mark:
> "it might be "the quest to restore Coy with
> his family which drives Larry onwards".
>
> and, family, yes, cause it is family in which
> innocence---normal children---can exist.
>
> When we get there, i will argue for how important

is saving Coy in P's world.

Indeed. Larry's sentimental reconnection with his own mother and  
father towards the end of the novel (352-3)  seems to have been  
directly inspired by the pro bono work he took on to get Coy and his  
wife and daughter back together. That Leo and Elmina want Larry to  
score some pot for them is one of those sit-com type surprise endings  
which is supposed to carry a humorously gentle punch (for Larry, our  
hero) along with it.

But even though this episode of warm fuzziness for Larry is brought on  
by the supposedly 'happy ending' for Coy, Hope and Amethyst, it's  
actually juxtaposed with the scene where he makes the swap with the  
'Golden Fang operatives'. In this instance they're a 'wholesome blond  
California family' right out of the 1950s American Dream, complete  
with 'a '53 Buick Estate Wagon, the last woodie that ever rolled out  
of Detroit, a nostalgic advertisement for the sort of suburban  
consensus' of homeowners as opposed to 'all the non-home-owning  
infidels' who the powers-that-be in American society would like to see  
in 'exile'. (349-50)

The allegory is laid on pretty thick here. The six year old son  
'already looked like a marine', the daughter looks as if she 'had a  
possible future in drug abuse', and 'Mom and Dad' have been co-opted  
by the system. There's an insinuation that 'Dad' might have once been  
a smack addict himself, like Coy, and 'Mom' seems to want to be a  
Stepford wife (and looks like Hope). The pay-off for the smack is a  
'credit card' so that Coy can rejoin 'the main herd'.

This vision of 'family' is a decidedly negative one, and it's American  
capitalism, as represented by real estate moguls and the automobile  
industry and the military and credit and loan agencies (and  
dentists!), which is shown to be in cahoots with the 'Golden Fang'  
smack cartel, if not what the cartel itself is actually made up of.  
(So yes, as the millison said, both ways, the moralising about heroin  
getting into the breast milk back in Ch. 2, and identification of the  
major players in the heroin trafficking industry in the US through the  
'Golden Fang' narrative thread.)

... There's also Larry's realisation that Bigfoot's 'not my brother'  
and his decision to let him carry on with his vendetta without  
intervening any more, even though he is concerned for the cop's well- 
being. ...

So, anyway, after his job is done, the first thing Larry does is ring  
his folks. The vision of a non-American Dream style family we get  
here, people who watch Hawaii 5-0 and Another World on the Tube and  
smoke dope and dance with Mexicans in bowling alleys and where  
grandparents babysit the kids, is a positive one.

The 'dope good, smack bad' moral on which everything hinges in the  
novel tends to be a bit reductive ...

Anyway, there are comparisons with Vineland in all of this, and I  
think that, just like the uncertain future which Prairie has ahead of  
her in that novel, so too the 'journeys' ahead for Coy and his family  
are left up in the air.

con los mejores deseos