Re: IVIV (15) 269/274—7000 Romaine revisited

[Joseph Tracy]

On Nov 22, 2009, at 5:47 PM, Robin Landseadel wrote:

> On Nov 22, 2009, at 12:44 PM, Joseph Tracy wrote:
>
> Here's a little history lesson for you, and some reminders from the  
> text. IF RFK had not been killed the FFF 's ( fascists for freedom- 
> Nixon Reagan Bush) candidate Dick Nixon would probably have been  
> beaten. Howard Hughes was a major Nixon supporter.  Nixon is at the  
> centre of the Golden Fang organization( that's why they had those  
> crateloads of Nixon Bucks. The CIA , the military industries and  
> Howard Hughes are also tied to the Fang( dentistry as extractive  
> industry, the mob behind the mob, Vegas, Mickeys Vegas real real  
> estate deal that was really HH's historic deal) .  The central  
> story is about killers for hire working in coordination with police  
> FBI, Fang , Nixon supporters( vigilant ) and high levels of state  
> office who killed someone who might have prevented Ron Reagan from  
> getting elected.  So the question prevents
Oops! presents itself
> itself to this reader- who was killed that might have prevented  
> Dick Nixon from getting elected? Is that explicit enough for you?
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ----------------------
>
> The hallmark of the style of "Inherent Vice" is "stooopid" with  
> three "O"'s. It is a style in large part derived from "Nick Danger,  
> Third Eye" one of the touchstones of the counterculture in Los  
> Angeles, 1970.
I see the influence and have some Nick Danger and other Firesign on  
my ipod, but Pynchon isn't Firesign or Tommy Chong and there is much  
in IV that is gritty , dark, and violent, some that is sensitive to  
the damages of drug use sexual abuse and other abuse, and much more  
complexity in every area.  Not saying there isn't plenty of stooopid,  
and style-wise it is the major key but there are several layers here  
and several times when the smart-ass slapstick falls away completely.
> The ancedent of Nick Danger is Philip Marlowe,  "Nick Danger" is a  
> low-rent mauling of Philip Marlowe with plenty of reefer jokes and  
> Beatles references—when the FS did "Dope Humor Of The Seventies" on  
> "Not Insane or Anything You Want To" they were pointing to Nick  
> Danger at the high-watermark of their career, for better or for  
> worse. Stooopid is a central element of that particular comic mode  
> of expression and articulation. Pynchon got so specific about that  
> particular comic mode of expression and articulation that he  
> narrated a short film as to re-familiarize some readers with that  
> particular patois.
>
> Or Whatever.
>
> Nick Danger is to "Inherent Vice" as Glenn Gould is to "The Goldbug  
> Variations," an explicit point of reference that is never stated  
> explicitly.
>
> Raymond Chandler was writing trash with plenty of literary  
> flourishes to make it all gaudier than Liberace's necktie on Carrot  
> Top's neck stuck in one of Captain Beefheart's fruit fights.  
> Raymond Chandler is more fun to read than just about anybody else  
> doing "Mystery Novels"—and there's a lot of really good Mystery  
> Novels out there. These kinds of books of course offer up clues,  
> Nick Danger, in "Cut 'em Off At the Past"—a whodunnit that includes  
> time travel, bad puns and a cameo from F.D.R.—has Nick Danger in  
> his final scene reading hexagram 7 from the Richard Wilhelm & Cary  
> F. Baynes translation of the I Ching: Shih—"The Army." Figuring on  
> the whole MGM clearance sale patchouli-scented vibe of the time and  
> place, chances to play out stoned fantasies in Vintage costumes  
> turned into a semi-profitable gig for four or five crazy guys [and  
> I always wondered who that fifth guy might be ][organ stab!.] In  
> any case, "The Army" fit into the "other sided's" [actually "this  
> side's"] tubal fantasy of war and redemption—"We're Bringing the  
> War Back Home!"— equipped with a very high frequency of jokes that  
> were designed to go flat.
>
> In any case, a conflation of Nick Danger and Tommy Chong, "Doc" is  
> a veteran of many cop-related crimes—he's only lowering his  
> expectations just like everybody else does. So here we have  
> Bigfoot, the competent and thoroughly corrupt cop playing Bernie  
> Ohls/Lieutenant Bradshaw to Doc's intersection of Eliot Gould and  
> Tommy Chong—and the whole tone of the book let's us know that at  
> least one of the clues in the book is going to be THAT obvious,  
> like the obvious stuff in Nick Danger.
>
> The clues we're given are on page 269 through 274. It's West  
> Hollywood. We know that Bigfoot and Doc are taking a stroll here.  
> The streets are specifically named. Look at the map:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/ygq7ca4
>
> Things are specific as regards street names here, assuming that  
> Bigfoot and Doc are always on foot, Bigfoot might still have his  
> car parked at "Waste-a-Perp" or even otherwise: zooming out on the  
> Google map from the corner of Le Brea and Santa Monica, with your  
> view extended outward to show both Sweetzer and South LaBrea and  
> the two streets make an arrow that points to 7000 Romaine Street,  
> Los Angeles. Stooopid? Sure! But survey the map anyway.
>
> Doc is asking who's behind all these cokehead doctors and massive  
> shipments of smack and skinhead thugs and professional hit men and  
> Bigfoot is pointing to 7000 Romaine Street, Los Angeles 90038.
OK Hughes was clearly in on some heavy shit and it looks like that or  
something else took its toll on him, and I think you are onto a key  
political component and are right to push him forward. For me it ties  
everything together in a way that I was looking for with the  
political aspect. But Pynchon is doing more than identifying a  
particular criminal; he is identifying an archetype or mythic hero of  
a major American psychopathology and looking at many elements of  
that  archetype and pathology.

I have just started reading Jung's The Archetypes and the Collective  
Unconscious and came to this passage that I think applies to what I  
am saying. He is speaking about the revival of primitive patterns of  
collective myth manifest in Fascism.
	"The man of the past is alive in us today to a degree undreamt of  
before the war, and in the last analysis what is the fate of great  
nations but a summation  of the psychic 	changes in the  
individuals?."   C Jung



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