Not Drugs The Anatomy of Melville's Melancholy (Thoreau: "when men are prepared for it")

[Robin Landseadel]

On Nov 14, 2009, at 12:05 PM, alice wellintown wrote:
> That the author took drugs, as many have in the past, doesn't matter.
> We don't read Poe or Freud or Coleridge or countless others merely
> because they took drugs or wrote drug induced or influenced prose or
> poems or essays. The use of drugs to augment or expand artistic
> expression or unblock artistic stops, is quite common. So common, in
> fact, it's difficult to find artists in any discipline who have not
> tried drugs or other "natural" methods for these purposes. That
> P-texts are saturated with drugs, as they are saturated with TV is
> obvious enough. Why? That's what you've not explained. You claim that
> the author's POV has been permanently altered by drug use. This may be
> true; you can't prove it. But why do you defend the claim? Is it
> meaningful to some deeper reading of the texts?

Yes, I do believe that is the case. There is the issue of those roads  
not taken. There are those issues of Gnostic/Visionary experience.  
Like it or not, Pynchon's exploration of spies and spycraft sooner or  
later gets around to MKULTRA and its relatives. You think such issues  
are in the books as examples of tail-chasing paranoia. I'm not in  
agreement with that. At all.

Just because there's an overwhelming abundance of what you would call  
the more puritanical concerns and the continuation of a literary  
legacy that goes back to Plymouth Rock in these novels doesn't alter  
the manifest presence of drugs and drug related issues in Pynchon. As  
to why, I'm sure you've got your theories. I would say that the more  
dystopian aspects of these issues are on display in Inherent Vice.  
Considering your abiding fondness of bummers in general, I thought  
you'd have already picked up this Bal and run with it.

One thought—my opening sesame to Pynchon was The Crying of Lot 49. You  
might find some indication of the presence of God in the folds and  
convolutions of the story. I might find the absence. LSD figures  
heavily into that—if the visionary experience is really only the  
action of chemicals on the brain, what next?