pynchon-l-digest V2 #7241

[Mark Kohut]

And, superficially, which has its own truth, that America has become an addictive society since the sixties in so many ways we are still discovering and dealing with, is another social observation of Pynchon's we see he saw.......imho. 

--- On Fri, 10/30/09, Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:

> From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: pynchon-l-digest V2 #7241
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Friday, October 30, 2009, 9:55 AM
> 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.
> 
> 
>