offlist RE: IVIV Larry smoking dope

[Carvill, John]

<< John has as much right to complain that Robin is coming off as an 
arrogant jerk as Robin has to be one. >>

Heh. Yeah, and as Keith just pointed out, it's kinda rich for Dough to cry about how I have no right to tell people what not to post, which is in itself his way of telling me what not to post.


Let me summarise a couple of the 'points' I was trying to make:

1. Pynchon & Dope

It's obvious Pynchon has enjoyed smoking dope, taking LSD, etc. There are huge swathes of his books, generally and really specifically, which surely show the influence of drugs, stoner culture, etc. Hey, I personally like drugs! I'm not against them.

I just think the idea that Pynchon wrote, say, Gravity's Rainbow, whilst stoned and/or tripping is absurd. Yes he probably did a lot of acid and weed during the months/years he spent writing GR, of course he did. My point only relates to the very specific, hoary old claim that when he sat down at the typewriter (or took his pen to his quadrille paper) to work on GR, Pynchon was tripping and/or stoned on marijuana. Personally, I would dispute the possibility that such a work could be written in such a state. But that's not the point. To me, the more important point is that, if we allow the Siegelish suggestion that 'Pynchon wrote GR stoned' to mutate and become received wisdom, then it trivializes Pynchon's art. And Pynchon, unlike such revered mainstream authors such as Roth or Updike, needs more, not less, serious recognition from the literary 'establishment', and less - not more - of a reputation as a reclusive stoner. Allowing the general public to think of Pynchon as some guy who gets ripped on various drugs then spews out big, long rambling 'druggy' books like GR, does Pynchon a disservice. That's all.


2. Doc & Dope

Like everyone else, I initially bought the idea of Doc as a habitual weed smoker. And yeah, he smokes joints in the book. All I ever wanted to do was to raise the question of, well, is he really so stoned all the time as we migh initially assume? Maybe he is. Maybe not. There are a number of occasions when he pointedly does not smoke a joint, so as to keep his wits about him, for example.


3. Pynchon & Chandler

I don't discount everything that Robin says, by any means. I read his posts. He often raises interesting points. But it has become very wearying, having the same thing said over and over, that Chandler is 'crucial' to IV. How could Chandler not be pertinent to a work of this sort? Equally, are there a number of *specific* ways in which certain passages/characters from certain Chandler books seem to be directly or explicitly referenced, in some significant way, in IV? Not that I am aware of. I just get so tired of someone who appears to have given himself a crash course in Chandler studies, coming on here and telling us p-listers, people who probably already knew a fair amount about Chandler, nothing very much new on the matter. Maybe other people don't feel so irritated by that. Ok.

Then, tying it all together, there's the way people make an argument, then someone replies with a counter-argument, and instead of either conceding the point, or coming back with a further counter-argument, they just ignore it and move on. Example: Robin says well, wasn't John Lennon tripping when he 'constructed' Strawberry Fields Forever? Eh? Whaddya say to that, Mister I Don't Think Pynchon Ever Touched A Joint In His Life? And when I say, well, first off that's a fairly specious comparison, GR versus Strawberry Fields Forever, and anyway Lennon was not tripping when he 'constructed' that song, what response do I get from Robin? Zip.

As for Doug, him and me had a fall-out earlier this year, because he got really irate when I questioned his 'reading' of Chandler's Marlowe as a 'brute', but then we resolved our differences. Now Doug re-surfaces, specifically to snipe at me, laud Robin's Chandler posts, and cosy up to his former nemesis, the Playboy Interview sceptic 'rj'. Really, this is all a bit much. But so what? We can all agree, everyone here - me, Doug, Robin, hell, even 'rj' - we all have an equal right to post our thoughts etc.
 
Doug taking our OFFLIST correspondence and posting it to the list, however, that's in a category all by itself.