CoL49 (5) Sidney [Genghis] Cohen

[Robin Landseadel]

On Jul 6, 2009, at 12:35 PM, David Payne wrote:

> On Tue, 30 Jun 2009 (11:00:48 -0700), Robin (robinlandseadel at comcast.net 
> ) wrote:
>
>> [...] Whatever else is going on in CoL49, JFK simply is
>> not the first thing that comes to mind—LSD is.
>
> Sorry to be a slow learner, but the lightbulb just lit.

'Bout time!

> Postage stamps symbolizing LSD? Both made in sheets; remove a small  
> square and place it on the tongue.

Question: When did blotter acid first appear?

> In the context of the novel, stamps reveal Gnostic-like insights,  
> open a new world (or perhaps the "new world" is just the truth of  
> the old world revealed).

Don't forget the "Manchurian Candidate" issues during the height of  
the cold war era. Drugs that make folks go crazy were at the center of  
that hunka-hunka- burning brainpan paranoid conspiracy.

> And perhaps a dark side of obsession (vs when you get the message,  
> hang up), as Oed moves away from her previous life, becoming  
> gradually isolated, moving from fidelity to casual sex to friendship  
> to talking to strangers to just watching ... devoid of meaningful  
> human relationships.



By any reasonable measure, Oedipa [at the very least] goes temporarily  
insane.

> And then there's the government-controlled production threatened by  
> counterfeits, the emergence of an underground that's dispossed, both  
> downtrodden and at times mafia-esqe?

	OK. It's unavoidable, isn't it? Every access route to the Tristero
	could be traced also back to the Inverarity estate.

Who was producing all that acid that hit the streets starting in '66?  
Who was the money, the brains behind that push?