pynchon-l-digest V2 #7241

[Robin Landseadel]

On Oct 29, 2009, at 10:48 PM, Joseph Tracy wrote:

> On Oct 29, 2009, at 2:53 PM, John Carvill wrote:
>
>> Whatever, the connection between the CIA and drugs is one which
>> Pynchon made 100% explicit a long time ago, in Vineland, as well all
>> know. Robin, over to you.....
>
> So Pynchon gets it about the CIA as the new masters / dupes of the  
> great game and touches on CIA drug angle in ATD and Vineland. And   
> Gary Webb did this very substantive and well documented  
> investigation. But Webb's career was destroyed and he was ignored  
> and discredited by the MSM and the whole obscene mess of several US  
> president having this private and unconstitutional army funded by  
> heroin traffic is never confronted or stopped. The trouble is not  
> that the NY Times checks it out and the Tribune, LA times etc and  
> find that the story is without evidence or the facts don't check  
> out . They all just turn away.  And I think that is what Pynchon is  
> getting at with the Golden Fang.
> They are the dark secret that everybody from insurance people and  
> lawyers to street dealers , limo drivers, prostitutes,  and  
> actresses knows about. Doc seems pretty sharp to me but the point  
> may be that the most stoned  reefer-mad newsman or investigator that  
> wanted to know could get this story.         It's like Pynchon is  
> saying that when all the clues point the same way, that is the one  
> place we don't look. That is the thing we will leave to "conspiracy  
> nuts".
>
> And here it is again. The story isn't hiding; it's page one of the  
> NYT. The CIA is paying the biggest opium dealer in Afghanistan who  
> is the brother of the president of Afghanistan and we ignore it   
> talk about the exact number of troops to send.   The president hires  
> his economics team almost exclusively from Goldman Sachs.  As long  
> as the wall streeters get their millions and the reporters work for  
> them, the story of the Golden Fangs continuing  gang rape of America  
> will be  covered as  with numbed indifference as though we are all  
> too far away to do anything.
>
> When a nation treats itself as a joke  what should the artists do?  
> Yo, yo  I got his great idea for a Coen Brothers detective  movie.  
> Picture Cheech and Chong meets Chinatown with Nixon as the  
> antiChrist, lots of pussy, vintage cars , in jokes, early internet  
> shit. This is gunna be big.

Xactamente—You nailed it Joseph. This is not a case of failing to see  
Pynchon's art or master "plot", this is a case of being faithful to  
Raymond Chandler's plots, the acknowledgment of insulated power in  
high places, of those folks you just don't mess with, the real mafia,  
not that hand-job mafia that's really only there for show.