pynchon-l-digest V2 #7241

[Mark Kohut]

Monte sez: 
> Ummm... you DO know what crop made Jamestown, VA viable,
> right? (Its original sponsors and settlers had had gold in
> mind.) The slave-tended crop that accounted, more than
> anything else, for the prosperity and predominance of
> Virginia among the colonies for the next 200 years, until
> cotton took over?  The one we're still heartily
> subsidizing and promoting for foreign sales, even as we
> officially deplore and discourage it at home? 
> 
> For those less attuned to smoke, of course, there were the
> sugar islands of the Caribbean -- the slave-tended crop
> which represented even more trade and profit to Great
> Britain than pipeweed. IIRC, about three times as much in
> the late 1700s as ALL trade with ALL the mainland colonies
> together. (Which is one reason GB grudgingly acquiesced to
> our independence: they feared that carrying on the war would
> give the Frogs and Dagoes a shot at the REAL crown jewels
> like Jamaica.) It's arguable whether sugar is "addictive" in
> every sense, but as it became cheaper and more abundant,
> Europeans sure consumed it as if it were.
> 
> One might even view slave-holding itself as an addiction, a
> view more than hinted at in Mason & Dixon. I've noted
> here before that over the span 1600-1820, 70% or more of ALL
> those crossing the Atlantic westbound were African slaves.
> (The only reason they didn't dominate the colonial New World
> demographically was that so many of them died and/or failed
> to multiply on those Caribbean sugar islands, which made the
> harshest Simon Legree cotton plantation on the mainland seem
> benign by comparison.) Our comfy conventional story makes
> that 70% an unfortunate footnote to the REAL narrative of
> the best and bravest, coming from the Old World to clear the
> wilderness and feed their families with their own brawny
> melanin-challenged arms. In fact, an awful lot of them
> responded to a triple siren call: cheap land to steal from
> Native Americans (and mark up for sale to the next wave, cf.
> young George Washington and the Ohio Valley)... addictive
> crops to sell back to Europe... and slaves to do the work.
> In that perspective, the Civil War looks a bit like a
> withdrawal symptom, no?
> 
> I don't disagree with your point above: just sayin that the
> Tubal, therapeutic and psychotropic addictions burgeoning
> "since the sixties" are fresh frosting on a big ol' cake.

A very good perspective, of course.....my remark had in mind the perhaps superficial cultural commentators cataloguing American culture since I was a kid......the spread of addictive drugs--not pot--since the time of IV....hard dope, crack, meth....the recognition of tobacco as an addiction and the (seeming) growth of awareness of alcoholism, etc.......as I wrote, perhaps superficial...........

All prevalent before my time as well, of course, and not focussed on by most historians from whom I learned what history I know. Hofstadter's book on the America of 1750, for example, had nothing akin in it, if I remember rightly, for example. (I use him, there are many later historians of course, 'cause I have other speculations that TRP might have read him---the paranoia essay and book, for example, at least).

So, as the revsionist historians like Monte are always saying, it (might always) have been so. 

My remark was an explication add-on of The Golden Fang post about all them drugs in Inherent Vice. 
And I will stick with the text resonances here: one meaning of The Golden Fang and its cargo is to bring into the US addictive drugs...and in IV that serves as some kind of comment on the America of Inherent Vice. 

PS. Yu'all remember that wonderful bit in GR where we learn of "our deepest human desire", I believe it is: something to kill our pain that does NOT become an addiction?   By cuttting to the quick as TRP can, we can see how the very statement refutes (or proves) itself. That is, when we are in real pain, we would, almost of course, become addicted to WHATEVER ended it if/when the pain came back.....

But if the pain were existential?????  

 


--- On Sat, 10/31/09, Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net> wrote:

> From: Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net>
> Subject: RE: pynchon-l-digest V2 #7241
> To: "'Mark Kohut'" <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> Cc: "'pynchon -l'" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Saturday, October 31, 2009, 11:04 AM
> Mark Kohut sez:
> 
> > America has become an addictive society since the
> sixties in so many 
> > ways we are still discovering and dealing with...
> 
> Ummm... you DO know what crop made Jamestown, VA viable,
> right? (Its original sponsors and settlers had had gold in
> mind.) The slave-tended crop that accounted, more than
> anything else, for the prosperity and predominance of
> Virginia among the colonies for the next 200 years, until
> cotton took over?  The one we're still heartily
> subsidizing and promoting for foreign sales, even as we
> officially deplore and discourage it at home? 
> 
> For those less attuned to smoke, of course, there were the
> sugar islands of the Caribbean -- the slave-tended crop
> which represented even more trade and profit to Great
> Britain than pipeweed. IIRC, about three times as much in
> the late 1700s as ALL trade with ALL the mainland colonies
> together. (Which is one reason GB grudgingly acquiesced to
> our independence: they feared that carrying on the war would
> give the Frogs and Dagoes a shot at the REAL crown jewels
> like Jamaica.) It's arguable whether sugar is "addictive" in
> every sense, but as it became cheaper and more abundant,
> Europeans sure consumed it as if it were.
> 
> One might even view slave-holding itself as an addiction, a
> view more than hinted at in Mason & Dixon. I've noted
> here before that over the span 1600-1820, 70% or more of ALL
> those crossing the Atlantic westbound were African slaves.
> (The only reason they didn't dominate the colonial New World
> demographically was that so many of them died and/or failed
> to multiply on those Caribbean sugar islands, which made the
> harshest Simon Legree cotton plantation on the mainland seem
> benign by comparison.) Our comfy conventional story makes
> that 70% an unfortunate footnote to the REAL narrative of
> the best and bravest, coming from the Old World to clear the
> wilderness and feed their families with their own brawny
> melanin-challenged arms. In fact, an awful lot of them
> responded to a triple siren call: cheap land to steal from
> Native Americans (and mark up for sale to the next wave, cf.
> young George Washington and the Ohio Valley)... addictive
> crops to sell back to Europe... and slaves to do the work.
> In that perspective, the Civil War looks a bit like a
> withdrawal symptom, no?
> 
> I don't disagree with your point above: just sayin that the
> Tubal, therapeutic and psychotropic addictions burgeoning
> "since the sixties" are fresh frosting on a big ol' cake.
> 
> -Monte (may I help you to one more wafer-thin
> slice?)   
> 
>