IV 14 Riggs again

[Joseph Tracy]

  I'm thinking about Riggs Warbling at the end of CH 14. we seem to  
have 2 or 3 inconsistent views of him. When introduced he is Sloane  
Wolfmann's lover and seems mainly interested in getting hold of some  
of Micky's cash. Shasta has told Doc  Riggs and Sloane are scheming  
to have Mickey committed to an asylum. Here in 14 he seems devastated  
that Mickey's  plans for a free housing development in the desert is  
abandoned. Is that because he shares the idea or that he was getting  
paid to build them?  Why the gun? What/Who  is he hiding from,  
defending himself against ? If he was building the zomes in the  
desert,  which depended on reverse cash flow, why would he have  
wanted to inhibit or intervene in Wolfmann's largesse?


  My inclination is tha Riggs is the Stewart Brand version of a   
utopian, more the salesman than the believer.  He seems like the  
smart successful hippy as opposed to Denis's dumb but likeably  
sincere hippy. Was he playing too many games from too many angles  
and  made some bad moves?  What other world does he think he can  
escape to. This feature of the zomes kinda reminds me of the verse,  
"in my Father's house are many mansions" with a twist that maybe the  
Father is the Golden Fang or maybe just  the American idea of self  
reinvention. Does the idea of the Zomes' doorways relate to Sportello  
the doorway?  What is Doc really looking for?Scattered thoughts and  
questions.

One of the major themes seems to me to be the age-old tension which  
Jesus identified as the division of loyalty between God and Mammon.  
In IV that plays out  as tension between idealism and commercialism,   
between government as protection from criminal predators and  
government as chief enforcer for the biggest criminal predators; it  
also plays out on a personal level as tension between friendship and  
career. The hard-boiled detective with a moral compass is a classic  
device for exploring these tensions and revealing with "gritty  
realism" ( or some similar phrase) the actual texture of the social  
contract.  It seems that despite some of Doc's iffy past he is  
weirdly trusting of a kind of Karmic law to pay his way in this  
investigation, and the center of his motive for doing this dangerous  
work has shifted from Shasta to Coy/Hope.  Shasta is ephemeral, the  
hippie/ mistress/actor dream girl, who is also associated for Doc  
with his mother's dream of domestic happiness and Aunt Reet's get a  
lot while you're young.  Coy and Spike, Hope and Sortilege seem to  
have been through  the worst of both "system"( military/police/  
service to country) and counterculture and moved beyond both with  
tentative but more grounded and realistic goals of personal integrity  
and resistance.

I don't think Pynchon glorifies drugs, and he shows their dangers in  
IV and elsewhere; but in IV he focuses on the  criminality  and  
hypocrisy the state produces by controlling what can't be  
controlled.  Part of what drugs do in all of P's work  (and in real  
life) is to show how easily a slight shift in perspective will bring  
into question the accepted dogma of church and state, the creepy  
colonial enterprises  of land, wealth and mind that track the course  
of human history.  Drugs can be addictive, self destructive, mindless  
pleasure, consciousness expanding or transformative in any number of  
directions, but they sure as hell can't be controlled by the state  
any more than sex can.  All of this reminds us of the sordid violent  
history of places like Columbia, Mexico, Vietnam, Burma and  
Afghanistan where drug traffic and warfare combined in devastating ways.





T