LRB Review of IV, & Pynchon's Characters

[Joseph Tracy]

> Definitely the best IV review  I've read so far and a very well  
> done overview of Pychon's fiction; finally a reviewer who I believe  
> down do my socks has actually read Gravity's Rainbow. The  
> interdependencies in IV between violence and pleasure/excitement,  
> money and freedom, culture and counterculture, police and  
> criminality , lust and love are what struck me also.  But I think  
> it can be looked at as much as a Buddhist philosophy lesson as an  
> invitation to nihilism. Here "evil" is not as tied to individuals  
> as it is a the demonism of organizations and conformity to the  
> inherent vice of fast buck capitalism. I think there may be another  
> Doc Sportello novel coming down the pike as P fills out some of the  
> details of his own cultural context and recent American history. It  
> is intriguing and telling that in America as in Britain, her  
> cultural Mother, the detective novel  and its offshoot the paranoid  
> thriller seems to account for 1/3 the purchases of most libraries  
> and sells the most of any genre.  It is a model of reality that is  
> appealing but juvenile, with definite roots in Beowulf, the  
> archetypal myth of kill the brutes and make the world safe for the  
> golden Geets.  It has become hard to imagine a cooperative myth  
> replacing this agonistic, paranoid worldview and all too easy to  
> imagine the dark future that lies ahead if we don't.

Hallucinogens, underground worlds, flying, rainbows, music, visions,  
art, fiction, Shambalah, beach huts,  wave riders, sex for pleasure,   
Vineland, dirigibles, shamanic tribalism,  true love, retreat,  
reunion, friendship, parallel universes. We are taught with care to  
distrust all the things that enable a bit of hope, relaxation,  
blurring of boundaries, pleasure, laughter, ecstasy.  Sure these  
things have dangers, can become traps, addictions, lies but what is  
the acceptable and true hope or mythos, and why is it so violent and  
fucked up?  Does the prevailing mythos really liberate you from  
addiction, lies and dangers?  Does Judaism, Christianity, Communism,   
Islam, Capitalism, Fascism. Isn't every "pure" thing an invitation to  
genocidal madness, a war between the pure and impure?

Is Pynchon mocking and satirizing the "shallowness" of pot smokers  
and surfers, investigators, bass players and LSD gurus or is he  
drawing attention to our need for both shamans and shamuses, vision  
and information, work and pleasure. ( I , by the way, don't enjoy  
weed, as I've mentioned before, but for some it seems to provide  
relaxation and pleasure and laughter and has no inherent connection  
to dangerous forms of human misbehavior. There is something  
democratizing and communitarian about it , even if only that everyone  
smoking together is sharing, confused and illegal.)In other words pot  
isn't  my metaphor of  hope of a better world  but there are plenty  
of others here, and they connect to my list of licit and illicit  
pleasures, all of which undermine a kind of purist conformity. Is  
Lemuria delusional or a metaphoric assertion of a continent implied  
in my list  (Hallucinogens, underground worlds....)of the doors of  
perception of another way of being which I find throughout the  
writings of Thomas Pynchon?  Is there a hidden continent resident  
within us that is just as real or more real than the Military/  
infotech/ wall street scam  which claims so much of our attention?   
How real is that one as it teeters deeper an deeper into bankruptcy,  
dualistic political posturing and immobilizing corruption.

As laissez faire colonialist Capitalism founders maybe it will emerge  
that the head and the head cop have much in common.






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