IV 15 p256 reprogramming the cash flow

[Joseph Tracy]

On Nov 16, 2009, at 6:31 PM, John Bailey wrote:

> This point of the book was really unsettling for me - it's as if the
> novel hits the reset button, or Doc returns to find himself in a new,
> alternate universe which has branched ever-so-slightly from the one he
> was in before (this occurs all the time in AtD of course). In this
> universe, Shasta is wandering around carefree, and everybody knows it,
> whereas until now she'd been paranoid, hiding, and we later find out
> for good reason. Why is she out in the open here when she was
> essentially kidnapped and escaped her captors, rather than being
> freed?
My reading is that she and Mickey Wolfmann have been been  
successfully reprogrammed( I think the implication is that this is in  
the provenance of CIA MK ultra types, or Golden Fang Blatnoyd types  
which is the fictional version). I guess I was assuming this was a  
common reading , but it has not been flatly stated and should be.  
When Mickey is walked by the FBI agents through the Kismet (p 264) he  
is told his interest in Wolfmann is "inappropriate". Then agent  
Flatweed says ... "It's you hippies. You're making everybody crazy.  
We'd always assumed that Michael's conscience would never be a  
Problem. After  all his years of never appearing to have one.  
Suddenly he decides to change his life and give away millions to an  
assortment of degenerates-Negroes, longhairs, drifters. Do you know  
what he said? We have it on tape. 'I feel as if I've awakened from a  
dream of crime for which I can never atone, an act I can never go  
back and choose not to commit. I can't believe I spent my whole life  
making people pay for shelter, when it ought to have been free. It's  
just so obvious' " . Puck later confirms Mickey's devotion to  
Arrepentimiento.

Why would the FBI have that on tape? What was the special wing of the  
Chryskylodon Institute about ? Looks to me that they weren't  hiding  
the fact that they had "changed Mickey's mind to stop any further  
cash flow reversal. When Doc finds  Riggs at Arrepentimiento , Riggs  
says that at the time Mickey disappeared the funds for the building  
stopped. "Suddenly no more acid -head philanthropist. They did  
something to him." later Riggs  says"whatever they did to his brain ,  
they also reprogrammed his dick..."
To quote my summary of 15  When Doc asks Shasta where she has been,  
her answers are followed by question marks
“Had to go up north? Family stuff?” Shrug… as though she doesn’t  
really know where she has been. I think she has had her brain messed  
with. I suspect the Postcard was real but she was sending it from an  
altered state not of her own choosing.

The CIA's MK Ultra really was a serious program to master mind  
control, a lot of it was a failure and the clean late idea turned out  
to be more useful as torture and mental destruction than reshaping.  
But in this case Mickey and Shasta were mostly returned to an earlier  
state of mind. seems more like hypnotism than mind control and takes  
advantage of  existing mental habits . Possible? Ever been done?  I  
think P is using it as a metaphor for the vast array of persuasive  
techniques that are used to sell the system and in Chomsky's phrase,  
to manufacture consent.






>
> On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 4:03 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>  
> wrote:
>> end of CH 14, p 255 “ … didn’t really wake up till they were going  
>> over
>> Cajon Pass, and it felt like he’d just been dreaming about climbing a
>> more-than-geographical ridgeline ….and descending into new terrain  
>> it would
>> be more trouble than he might be up to to turn and climb back over  
>> again.”
>>
>> CH 15 256”…Tito let Doc Off.., and it was like landing on some other
>> planet.”
>>
>> It seems that Doc’s investigation is not over and that he has in fact
>> traversed into new territory. Before his inquiries he was mostly a  
>> local
>> character and his vision was fairly parochial but every lead  has  
>> led to
>> bigger games. While the terrain is bigger the incline is downward,  
>> and
>> everything familiar looks foreign. People are strange when you’re a
>> stranger.
>>
>> Coming and going from the world of GR must have been disorienting  
>> at times,
>> but anytime you see the bigger picture, or find evidence of the  
>> mob behind
>> the mob things look different. Also we move into the territory of  
>> what is
>> fictional reality and what is “real” reality. Often this manifests  
>> as a
>> dialogue between logic and sensory/emotional data: “maybe Tito had  
>> dropped
>> him in some other beach town” Doc grasps his head and advises  
>> himself to
>> “focus in and pay attention” . This brings up the PoMo or for that  
>> matter
>> Buddhist or Gnostic  question of how much you can trust what is  
>> going on in
>> your head.
>>
>>  At which point corroborating  witnesses are helpful.
>> “ Excuse me sir, I seem to be a little disoriented ? Could you  
>> please tell
>> me if this is by any chance Gordita Beach?”
>>
>> So to me Doc reflects to us that Pynchon readers aren’t the only  
>> ones asking
>> these questions and wondering what this story we read, or live, or  
>> tell
>> ourselves is all about.
>>
>> “ Wow, Doc , it’s me, you okay?......after awhile Doc dug how this  
>> was Denis
>> or somebody impersonating Denis, which, in the circumstances, he’d  
>> settle
>> for.
>>
>>