IVIV (10) page 157 [spoiler.]

[Robin Landseadel]

On Oct 14, 2009, at 6:51 PM, Bekah wrote:

> Cheap Mexican weed with stems and seeds is nasty stuff - it stings  
> kind of, burns the eyes.   And it can't even take care of Jason's  
> headache.

4 fingers for $10 back in 1970. It was damn near ubiquitous.

>  I don't know about "Columbian commercial,"  but Columbian in  
> general used to be smoother and more potent due to the soil there.

As I recall, it was darker, stickier and tended to have fewer seeds.  
Heavier, sleepier. At the same time, the precision of description of  
the various herbal remedies being smoked in Inherent Vice folds over  
neatly with current "compassionate care" terminology.

Those associations with famous criminals that Alice pointed out  
concerning Doc's parents—they underscore how these two thoroughly  
middle-class representatives of the American dream carry some criminal  
baggage. Note that near the end of the book they're asking Doc for  
some "compassionate care" so they can really watch "Another World" the  
way it's supposed to be watched. Again, this  is indicative of the  
present tense of "Weeds" and Oaksterdam and whatnot. At the same time,  
TRP is pointing out how much marijuana is a part of our collective  
history, just as he did in Against The Day, Mason & Dixon," "Vineland"  
and "Gravity's Rainbow." There are fewer mentions of that useful  
substance in his previous works, but from Gravity's Rainbow onward the  
author manages to present marijuana in a more or less positive context  
in all of his novels.

>  In the 1970s most of the marijuana in the US was imported - that's  
> not true anymore.

The Brotherhood of Eternal Love was a large importer of Marijuana in  
1970.

Other citations in the novel indicate that Sportello knows most of the  
ins and outs of weed circa 1970, though he manages to get sucker- 
punched by a hit of elephant tranquilizer near the end of the story.  
This leads naturally to the single most Chandleresque passage in the  
whole book.

Again, if there is an element of the palimpsest here we might find it  
in weed itself. Call it an "Inherent Vice" if an author is unwilling  
to speak on the record concerning his habits of intoxication—or  
anything else for that matter. Guess ". . . that useful  
substance. . ." will have to do for now. Consider, once more, Raymond  
Chandler's treatment of booze in his mysteries, a subject held every  
bit as close to the heart of Philip Marlowe as Ganja is to Doc  
Sportello's. Chandler notes the presence of alcoholic beverages with  
great frequency and panache—just about as often as Pynchon's various  
and sundry varieties of "muggles" are cited in Inherent Vice & Against  
the Day. The author displays pretty fair knowledge on the subject  
throughout "Inherent Vice." Of course, if one goes on too long & says  
too much more on the subject one might risk finding themselves being  
lumped together with the editors of "High Times," an interesting but  
precarious place to be legally these days.

In a way, there is the negative karmic potential of "Brotherhood"  
brand marijuana to fold in here, but both the characters and the  
narrator's voices indicate that the issue is small potatoes compared  
to the vast web of venality that the Golden Fang represents.

Like Raymond Chandler in "The Long Goodbye" there is the issue of  
becoming too punch-drunk to continue the fight. Raymond Chandler had  
good reason to be concerned with drinking in "The Long Goodbye" —one  
realizes that Marlowe's greatest fear is that he might turn into Roger  
Wade. Of course, that was Chandler's greatest fear—fear of blacking  
out, of going nuts and forgetting everything. That nightmare scenario  
is all over "The Long Goodbye." The fog that creeps onto Doc as he's  
trying to find the off-ramp home feels like the same kind of fear to  
me, the fear that the synapses are not snapping like they used to.  
That's all over "Inherent Vice."