CoL49 (5) Sidney [Genghis] Cohen

[Robin Landseadel]

On Jul 7, 2009, at 1:13 AM, Tore Rye Andersen wrote:

> Hum, hum, howbeit,--

. . . Pynchon did have "top secret" clearance when he worked at  
Boeing. "National Security" was the excuse for all sorts of weird  
behavior at the level of National Intelligence in the sixties. There  
was this little something called "Operation Midnight Climax", a  
project the CIA ran through MKULTRA [later MKSEARCH] from the mid- 
fifties until 1963, in San Francisco. Those intrepid souls who were  
being experimented upon with hallucinogens in the early sixties—like  
Ken Kesey—were also tied into the MKULTRA program.

Just ran across this little bit of information concerning that Johnny  
Appleseed of LSD, Alfred Hubbard:

	Like so many American boys at the turn of the 20th century,
	Alfred Hubbard started out barefoot and never made it to the
	fourth grade. He grew up in the hills of Kentucky and as a very
	young man, we are told, he was visited by a pair of angels who
	instructed him to "build something."

	In 1919, with absolutely no training, guided only by what he
	called other-worldly forces, Al Hubbard invented the Hubbard
	Energy Transformer, a machine in a box you could hold in your
	arms that powered a ferryboat around Seattle's Portico Bay for
	three days without stopping. He sold half the patent rights to the
	Radium Corporation of Pittsburgh for $75,000, and nobody ever
	heard another word about it. It wasn't the last time his work
	would "disappear."

http://everything2.com/node/1210858

	In addition to being a major proponent of LSD, earlier in life, Al
	Hubbard invented a device, also via divine inspiration at the
	age of 16, which provided enough "free energy" to power a boat
	around Portage Bay, on Lake Union, in Seattle, Washington. He
	 demonstrated the device for the Seattle Post Intelligencer and
	potential investors on July 28, 1920. During the demonstration,
	the boat was said to travel at about 10 knots (~18km/h), and it
	was silent aside from the sound of the electric motor, which was
	linked to the boat's prop via a belt. The boat was said to have
	never slowed during trip around Lake Union.

	Hubbard received a patent for his device which he called the
	"Atmospheric Power Generator," from the United States Patent
	Office, number 1,723,422. Hubbard, when speaking to the
	press said the device generated 280A at 125V which is 35kW,
	or roughly equivalent to about 45HP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Matthew_Hubbard

	It was Hubbard’s theory that LSD didn’t produce a “model
	psychosis” so much as a different way of seeing the world, one
	that offers us a clearer view of ourselves and our relationship to
	nature. . .

	. . .Hubbard decided to give up his share in the clinic and move
  	to California, where he became a sort of Johnny Appleseed of
	psychedelia, giving free LSD to everyone from housewives to
	celebrities such as James Coburn, Stanley Kubrick, Ken Kesey,
	and the Grateful Dead. Hubbard also became acquainted with
	a Harvard professor named Timothy Leary, who would do more
	than anyone else to promote the non-medical use of LSD
	among young people. . .

	. . .Psychiatrists and biochemists never figured out exactly what
	LSD does to the human brain, and since the drug was banned
	there hasn’t been any research into the mystery. It is believed
	that the compound is absorbed by the body and disappears in a
	short period of time, but its effect on the human psyche can
	endure for many hours and sometimes days. Obviously, the
	psyche is a complicated matter. In layman’s terms, one might
	think of it as a structure, a rickety play fort that arises from the
	mud of childhood and eventually becomes a proud high-rise,
	containing all our accomplishments, defeats, jealousies,
	ambitions, biases, longings, and stored memories. This is our
	hard-earned “identity,” and it becomes a sort of psychic
	headquarters from which we interpret and evaluate the world.
	LSD functions like a chunk of plastic explosive attached to the
	main load-bearing post in our underground garage. The
	chemical doesn’t need to stick around. It only needs to cut one
	post and gravity does the rest.

	What emerges from the smoke and dust of the collapsed
	psyche is a naked baby — the same wide-eyed infant that
	looms enormous in the final scene of Stanley Kubrick’s LSD-
	influenced film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Without the mediating
	structure of identity, the world becomes a terrifyingly vivid place.
	Music, colours, texture, taste — all suddenly regain the
	distracting power we’ve spent so many years training ourselves
	to ignore. We ignore the world so that we can take care of
	business. After all, how efficient would we be if we couldn’t step
	outside without pausing to stare in slack-jawed amazement at
	every tree?

http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2007.06-society-peaking-on-the-prairies/3/

	Pynchon is aware of the same clinical availability of LSD that
	initially turned Kesey onto psychedelics.*

http://tinyurl.com/nvh7yz

At the same time, Pynchon is also working on a mammoth novel that  
points to the CIA/Nazi connection.

Whatever else is going on in The Crying of Lot 49, National Security   
[Yoyo/Rocketdyne] and Government led research into the development of  
tools for driving people insane [Dr. Hilarius and his #37 "Fu Manchu"  
girn]—aka development of "special interrogation techniques" very  
specifically utilizing the psychomimetic potential of LSD—are in the  
book in plain sight. You don't need to cross your eyes —just so, and  
only in the right light—to see that.

*The author of this book—The Hippie Narrative—Scott MacFralane, states  
that CoL49 was written 1964/1965.