James Wood On Pynchon's Characters

[Rob Jackson]

On 10/11/2009, at 1:53 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:

>  It seems TRP experienced pot---he seems to say so in a non-fiction  
> piece

Specifically, he describes marijuana as "that useful substance" (p. 8)  
in his Intro to the Slow Learner collection of stories. NB that this  
is the autobiographical fragment where Pynchon writes about his  
development as a writer.

I don't think that it diminishes the quality of the work one bit to  
note the near-obsessive prevalence of drugs and drug-taking as subject  
matter and theme, stoner humour &c in the novels, and the  
correspondingly plentiful supply of to my mind obviously drug-inspired  
images, passages and sequences in the writing. The two things go hand  
in hand. ... I mean, Pirate's "giant Adenoid" dream, come on ...

And I don't necessarily think you need to be a user or non-user, or  
pro or anti-drugs to make the observation.

I'm not sure that I'd go so far as to say that GR "encourages" drug  
use, at least not overtly, and I think that Laura's clarification of  
her comment was apt and one that I can identify with; but the novel  
certainly does depict drug usage, and represents experiences of being  
high, frequently and enthusiastically and as a normal component of  
many people's daily lives. Vineland is very much on the side of the  
marijuana growers and against the anti-drug enforcement agencies and  
operatives. P himself does endorse marijuana as a "useful substance"  
in his memoir. The overall attitude towards dope-smoking in IV is much  
more positive than the attitude towards heroin, for example. So ...  
yes, there is a whole lot of evidence "IN THE TEXT".

> Your words,  to me, are some kind of strange argument that the books  
> that you do not think work were not written enthusiastically or  
> under drug use

No, that's not my argument.

all best


> I was thinking also of episodes like the Advent sequence or Byron  
> the Bulb where there is a visionary quality to the writing, the  
> train of connections, the imagery, that I'd guess was drug-inspired;  
> obviously edited and polished later on in a clearer and more  
> professional (let's say) headspace. In IV and AtD that quality, that  
> sense of vibrancy or enthusiasm or enjoyment (of the writing process  
> as much as the drug-taking) is missing.
>
> The turning away (or being turned away) from any real activism is an  
> ongoing theme, the exhortation to Slothrop to engage in eco-activism  
> or Dixon's violent assault on the slavedriver notwithstanding. They  
> are exceptions, depicted as acts of exceptional bravery or  
> fortitude. Denis is goofily likeable enough; Doc doesn't seem to  
> have much follow-through in terms of wanting to do something about  
> the corruption in high places or the evils of the corporate world  
> which he uncovers either. He remains willingly allied to Bigfoot  
> (just like Zoyd to Hector) despite all the protestations. It's  
> cartoon fare ... as much Scooby Doo as it is Hammett, Cain or  
> Chandler. Compared with the way that German Expressionist modes and  
> style are embraced in GR, IV really is weak pastiche, both a cop-out  
> and a sell-out, a parcel of parsley rather than hashish in your  
> hollandaise.
>
> Wood correctly points out in his letter how Thomas Jones' review of  
> IV does pay the novel some backhanded compliments, both deliberately  
> ("Inherent Vice lacks much of the menace and the passion of its  
> predecessors ... this flattening of affect .... Squint the right  
> way, and what looked like wry indulgence morphs into nihilism.") and  
> inadvertently in those last two grabs:
> 	And what Pynchon does with his characters,
>   	increasingly, is juvenile vaudeville. If you like that, fine. But  
> in
>  	his review, Jones unwittingly gives two reasons why one might not:
>  	reading Pynchon’s new novel, he writes, ‘is probably as close to
>  	getting stoned as reading a novel can be’ (which he takes as high
>  	praise); and – apropos of Pynchon’s relentlessly jokey treatment of
>  	1970s California – ‘But there’s something profoundly bleak about the
>  	inability to take anything seriously’ (which he also envisages as a
>  	compliment, of sorts).		
>
> 	James Wood	
> 	Cambridge, Massachusetts	
>
> with best wishes
>
> On 10/11/2009, at 12:42 AM, Laura wrote:
>> Good point.  GR encourages drug use.
>>  I've never dropped acid, but after reading GR I
>> sure wanted to.  Slothrop stretching out on the
>> crossroads, disintegrating, becoming one with Nature, is the
>> sort of turning on, tuning in, etc. that was the purported
>> heart of the '60s (drug, anyway)trip.  By contrast,
>> reading IV is as meaningful as being the lone straight
>> person in a roomful of stoners -- it'd make anyone want
>> to run out and flush their stash.  The book makes any
>> drug use seem damn unattractive.  It seems deliberate,
>> but I don't think Pynchon's merely being priggish in
>> his old age. Pot-smoking led to the dippy idealism
>> (personified by Denis, in particular) that deflected any
>> real social/political activism on the part of those who
>> copiously partook.  Maybe the paving stones covering
>> the beach, in the opening quote, are bricks of heroin,
>> covered by a thatch-work of
>> marijuana.
>> Laura
>
>>> -----Original
>>> Message----->From: Rob Jackson
>>> <jbor@[omitted]>
>>>
>>> In IV, Pynchon seems to write alot about
>>> the processes of getting  >stoned,
>>> describing it as an outsider or wannabe would, and it feels
>>>  >and sounds pretty stale and humdrum as a
>>> result, whereas some of the  >most beautiful
>>> passages and sequences in GR and M&D for example are so
>>>  >obviously trip-inspired. And there is a
>>> true and authentic sense of  >immediacy to
>>> the experiences described (the getting, having, not
>>>  >having, needing, wanting, not wanting,
>>> etc., of the illicit product of
>>>  >choice) in the earlier novels which is
>>> absent from IV.
>