IV Chapter 17 Thoughts

[rich]

On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Robin Landseadel
<robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Remember as well that Doc being constantly stoned—a wake 'n bake type—ties
> in with his soul brother Philip Marlowe. As Raymond Chandler faces up to
> such considerations as alcoholic black-outs and simple mortality in "The
> Long Goodbye," so does Pynchon face up to some of the consequences of
> Ganja's candy-coated fog and simple mortality in "Inherent Vice."
____
the "we blew it" moment in Easy Rider?
the long look back from the hotel room in Las Vegas by Dr Gonzo?
the soldier's lament at the hippie compound in Dog Soldiers?

rich

>
>>> Remember that Sportello is constantly stoned—"Completely Attached to
>>> Delusion", as John Giornio might say. That would go along with Lemuria
>>> and
>>> Bigfoot and a host of other non-scheduled theologies and mythic
>>> structures
>>> bruited about by the Freaks of the greater Los Angeles region, circa
>>> 1970.
>>> They are all signifiers of the demographic that Pynchon tends to focus
>>> on.
>>> Obviously Dope—and the karma attached to Dope—are major themes in
>>> "Inherent
>>> Vice." Again, this is grounded in reality, in the lives lived by millions
>>> in
>>> California during the transition from the sixties to the seventies. There
>>> was so much of the economy of California that was dependent on such
>>> things
>>> as the Military-Industrial Complex. There was so much of the economy of
>>> Los
>>> Angeles that was dependent on such things as the Underground Economy. The
>>> two meet up in the Golden Fang, that open palm of desire that wants
>>> everything. Pynchon must have been thinking about both issues a lot as he
>>> wrote Gravity's Rainbow, a lot of these considerations made their way
>>> into
>>> Gravity's Rainbow—Doper's Greed, anyone?
>>>
>>> Thoughts like Sportello's have dawned on me—who knew that all these
>>> major,
>>> corporate, record companies manufacturing songs of love and peace in the
>>> sixties turned out to be in the center of the Nuclear power, Nuclear
>>> weapons
>>> industries and other Military-Industrial interests? How could I know, as
>>> I
>>> was selling Bernard Haitink LPs—me being just another freak in a record
>>> shop
>>> flogging vinyl—that I was promoting Nuclear power at the same time?
>>> Simultaneously there are many parallels with current times, with so much
>>> of
>>> our collective hope for change torn apart by the reality of how money
>>> really
>>> is made.
>>>
>>> Doc has been working to get away from the karma of his line of work but
>>> there's no escape—it's one of the inherent vices of his occupation.
>
>