CoL49 (5) Sidney [Genghis] Cohen

Paul Mackin mackin.paul at gmail.com
Tue Jun 30 15:07:01 CDT 2009


On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 2:00 PM, Robin
Landseadel<robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
> On Jun 30, 2009, at 10:26 AM, Paul Mackin wrote:
>>
>> Yeah and God Bless the Dude.
>>
>> I think I once suggested to Charles that he reframe his arguments so
>> as to present Lot 49 as an allegory of how conspiracy theories work.
>>
>> Does everyone realize it was almost exactly ten years ago (April, May,
>> June of '99) that Charles posted extensively to the p-list under the
>> name of Dudious Max.
>>
>> He also corresponded privately to just about everyone who was a
>> regular poster at the time.
>>
>> Several of us are still around.
>>
>> P.
>
> I received a missive or two from the Dude myself last year. He thought I was
> on to something [thanks!] and that I have to clean up my act in terms of
> grammar, citations, the basic mechanics of writing [true.] He also has a
> shared interest in high-end audio, here's an excellent recent example:

Hey, there is nothing at all wrong with your writing.  I enjoy reading
you even when my own thoughts are swerving off in an entirely
different direction.


>
> http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue42/parasound.htm
>
> My sense is that the Dude is on to something, but that a lot of his stuff
> seems as mis-directed as Oedipa's quest. However, more than anyone else, his
> writings turned me on to the autobiography and family history in Pynchon's
> books. My sense is that the Pynchon family history of big money, heresy and
> science gets wrapped into the author's novels. Maintaining "radio silence"
> around his personal life helps to maintain an additional bit of mystery in
> his books. Still, when reading Pynchon I just can't help but think of how
> much energy he pours into the visionary state of mind and the probable modes
> of entry that got him there. Whatever else is going on in CoL49, JFK simply
> is not the first thing that comes to mind—LSD is.
>
>

My feeling is that Pynchon receives much stimulation and inspiration
from the circumstance of bearing a family name surrounded by a lot of
interesting history but I think Lot 49 is written straight from the
spirit of the sixties.  To me, JFK figures in this way, A popular and
even messianic figure was snatched away from an adoring public for no
apparent reason. Normal causality could not explain such an unnatural
happening. Paranoia reigned. A hunt for secret explanations generally
ensued.

I agree that LSD is very important to Lot 49. And in a special way.
Not particularly as a mind expander. Rather perhaps the reverse, as an
ego dissolver such as seems to have happened to Mucho.  This can be
thought of as being very topical to the sixties and I don't just mean
the CIA experiments. Radical psychiatry (Ronald Liang) was more than
half seriously talking about psychosis as being a normal adjustment to
living in certain disfunctional family situations. It was not too
great a leap to see psychosis as an adjustment to general social
conditions as well,. as Oedipa finally may come around to accepting in
the final pages of the novel. At first she is not ready to accept
Mucho's  embracing of paranoid schizophrenia. She holds out hoping for
the reality of Trystero. But if that hope falls through she is willing
to accept paranoia as the only way to live under a capitalism that
will not mend its ways.

A few years latter of course D & G as we fondly refer to them were to
development Schizoanalysis.

Pynchon was prescient.

P




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