IVIV IV & Playboy article

[dougmillison at comcast.net]

Whether Pynchon intended the novel as such will remain debatable, but Robin's program of finding TRP's autobiography in there seems viable, after re-reading the Playboy article. Find the plot point parallels! And maybe TRP has in fact responded to his old college pal's earlier article and book. Where the old journo sentimentalizes to the point of laugh-out-loud soft-focus '60s hippies nostalgia, imo, the view of the 60s in IV is an in-your-face breath of fresh if nasty air. 


…The grass was said to be Acapulco Gold. It was strong and beautiful. 
The day was misty soft —cloudy water-color weather. We drove down the 
coast past a couple of towns t see an abandoned baroque hotel, 
something out of Ingmar Bergman, but with a grand tattered Colonial 
flavor. As twilight thickened and condensed into liquid darkness, we 
returned to Manhattan Beach in relentlessly gathering fog. At night, 
we went down to the beach. The fog was so dense that the streetlights 
on The Strand disappeared a few yards' walk toward the sea. Enveloped 
in opal-gray night we floated in and out of one another's view, 
dancing down to the water. Only the foaming edge of the waves was 
visible, and even that was perceived mostly as a blurred lapping 
sound. We were alone on the empty margin of existence, walking the 
scant line between nowhere and nothing. 

… . As we sat in the kitchen, Tom 
said, "Do you believe in ESP? Strange things keep happening to me. One 
day I was sitting in here and the side of my head came off, opening 
into Candida's office, which I have never seen. She was talking on the 
telephone. Later, I spoke to her about it and told her what her office 
looked like. I had it all exactly right". 

…A few days later, on February 4, 1968, just before I was to leave for 
my brother's birthday party, which was to be held on a big boat moored 
off San Pedro (James Gould Cozzens fans, note well), I slipped and 
fell and broke my hip. Tom had been invited to the party and, in fact, 
did show up, striking an acquaintance with Susan, a friend of 
Chrissie's from San Marino. Susan has red hair and is breath-takingly 
beautiful, with the voluptuous body of a showgirl. Like Chrissie, she 
is much brighter than she looks, but if Chrissie plays the Dragon 
Lady, Susan plays Gracie Allen. The children of San Marino, one of the 
headquarters of The John Birch Society, are careful to avoid open 
displays of subversive intellect. Susan once came to the shattering 
realization while strolling on a concrete sidewalk that none of the 
squares was true, that, indeed, there were not true perfect squares to 
be found anywhere in reality. She was overcome by tears, then by 
nameless dread. A psychiatrist in San Marino diagnosed her a paranoid 
schizophrenic and prescribed shock treatment and apparently was going 
to administer it on the spot. Now really in hysterics, she called her 
father, who very sensibly countermanded the doctor's orders and calmed 
his child himself. Since then Susan has been very careful in guarding 
her emotions, to the point where she sometimes seems stupid and cold. 
It is a pose. 

Evidently, Tom saw through her mask, for the two went off and lived 
together for a long time. They came to visit me in the hospital and 
later at home, too. The last evening they were there, Michael Vosse 
showed up. He had some tarry black ganja, which he said had been grown 
high in the mountains by natives who beat the plants with whips woven 
of silver thorns to make them produce more resin. … 
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