IVIV: (14) Dope & Longing in Las Vegas

[Robin Landseadel]

On Nov 10, 2009, at 9:05 PM, Michael Bailey wrote:
>
> d) however, is there a contrarian "drugs-are-sometimes-indeed-bad"
> read possible?
> sure, but I think it's incorporated in the text like maybe a note of
> asafoetida in a cologne...pretty restrained, but transformatively
> there...

Is it possible that Pynchon pretty much has the same attitude qua  
drugs and druggies as in "Gravity's Rainbow," but tempered by  
experience this time? Like a joint or two for breakfast is no big, but  
there is some shit you might be better off not getting into? As far as  
I can tell, the author's a verbal hedonist and he's given every  
indication that he's most likely a hedonist of some sort anyway. As  
far as I can tell the author is still pro-pot. He's scientifically  
minded, he knows that Weed has no LD50, unlike MD 20/20. He made it  
pretty clear in more than one book that BIg Pharma, in general and  
particularly in the form of I.G. Farben and its exiled subsidiaries,  
sucks dogs.

"So Smoke Pot—it's the thinking man's cigarette"—Like Dave van Ronk  
always sez.