IVIV (10) page 157 [spoiler.]
Robin Landseadel
robinlandseadel at comcast.net
Thu Oct 15 17:23:41 CDT 2009
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."
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