IVIV Manson, Sportello & etc.

[Doug Millison]

I don't have the novel handy, but doesn't IV mention Manson's height  
somewhere, 5' 2" or something, and do we know Sportello's height?  Two  
short "hippies", with Manson the hippie that Dad could point to and  
say See I told you, and Sportello another kind of hippie and outlaw  
but as a P.I. also at times working with the police.  Some kind of  
compare/contrast going on here? Maybe Doc's the middle term between  
Manson and the full-fledged lifer cops like Bigfoot who eat their own  
and also work with the FBI to cover up political murders, kidnappings,  
maybe even some CIA hanky-panky in there in those posh headshrinker  
clinics .…

Caught part of a KPFA pledge drive while in the car this afternoon,  
they were playing some documentary that was describing the way the  
CIA, in the Cold War years after WWII, invested "across the board" in  
scientists working in the field of cognitive science and related  
disciplines, and  supported key folks in psychological research, this  
particular segment's focus the way the CIA sought to understand  
memory, how to manipulate it, how to enhance it.  They were  
interviewing a guy who wired the brains of asylum inmates in Montreal  
and applied electrical current to stimulate memories, complete with  
tape recordings of a lady in the process of being experimented upon  
with the electricity and reliving memories. Heady stuff.

By the end of IV, it seems that the Internet, seen here in its infancy  
as a tool of the FBI, is taking the place of pot and acid, even as Mom  
and Dad want Doc to score them a lid just for fun  (they know they're  
not dope fiends), meanwhile back at the Beach the hard-core dopers  
take the bale of heroin for a new kind of Tube, and start seeing  
motion pictures therein which reminds me a bit of what they're  
watching on that movie screen at the end of GR.

The Boards are supposed to be The Beach Boys  (another BB!), I guess,  
in Brian Wilson's crazy house that Pynchon supposedly visited when he  
was living in Manhattan Beach, according to his old college roommate.