IV 14 Riggs again

[Victor Lazzarini]

And according to Luz, Briggs is also an envious character, who not so  
much wants to have Mickey's 'belongings', but do not want him to have  
them.

Victor

On 12 Nov 2009, at 01:23, Joseph Tracy wrote:

> 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?
>
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> 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.
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