IVIV amethyst is resilient. There is too much kindness in the room all of a sudden.

[Joseph Tracy]

Why should the "idea" of this family have come first? Maybe the  
texture, the experience the kindness of a real family came first.  
Maybe this is based on someone real from Pynchon's life. Not the  
specific narrative arrangement but a family that was fucked up on  
heroin and found a new start. I think this story is  a real part of  
the world and sometimes people who have hit some kind of bottom will  
hang onto and appreciate love. Maybe the photo is a real photo of a  
real girl. I Don't want to be dishonest about the hell of addiction  
or its effects on children,  but some moms do get clean and raise  
good kids and not all kids born  with the effects of heroin use have  
permanently disabling damage. Pynchon tells this story so that it  
could have gone either way, but not everything that starts badly ends  
badly. And isn't this more "realistic" than a self conscious  light  
bulb or Herero missile experts. The number of babies born addicted is  
increasing everywhere.  Should we care, ? What is the point of  
leftist politics if there is no "kindness without a price tag"? Is  
the best we can do or imagine to distribute the misery more evenly?   
Get ahold of enough money for another fix of our special pleasure  
injection?

In some ways the problems of reading Pynchon's fiction is the problem  
of reading the world.  A lot of conflicting evidence, signs of hope  
side by side with signs a of darkest gloom, along with impenetrable  
wonders and piles of trash: Killing Fields, potlatches and square  
dances, imaginary and real conspiracies. We come with narrative  
inclinations. Maybe none of it is telling any kind of story, but  
people use stories like we use our hands and ears; it isn't just how  
we process experience, it's how we experience experience.

For years Pynchon has been a post-modern writer in the sense of  
contextualizing human experience within larger matrices of culture,  
history,  warfare. I find in IV he is shifting the emphasis to reveal  
the cultural warfare and complexity at work in people who are not  
quite stick figure stand ins for the  factions they represent, and  
probably couldn't give accurate portrayals of themselves if they  
wanted to. They all seem to have connections to both side of an  
undeclared war.  Bigfoot Bjornsen cultivates the Beowulf image while  
his real bit of heroism lies in knowing the corruption behind the  
scenes and trying to set a little of that right.  He can't do that  
without a pot smoking afro-headed private detective.

On Sep 6, 2009, at 4:59 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:

> I also agree that it works only as idea.....if it works at all.....
> Not nearly enough texture......
>
>>>>> Pynchon kind of glosses over the damaging
>> effects of
>>>> the heroin Amethyst has been exposed to in utero
>> and as a
>>>> young, addicted infant.  I found the description
>> of her
>>>> baby pictures pretty disturbing.  This isn't a
>> moral issue,
>>>> it's a physical and mental health issue.  Hope,
>> Coy and
>>>>
>>>> much kindness in the room all of a sudden.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hope, symbolic name for the mother of the
>> child in
>>>> the book, yes, asks about Shasta's relationship to
>> Doc. He's
>>>> touchy; projects jealousy?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Amethyst looks great, not like her baby
>> picture.
>>>> Sits up as if a grown-up would tell her a story
>> (another
>>>> internal metaphor for what the narrator does, ala
>> Tore's
>>>> argument for rooms bigger inside [like the
>> many-mansioned
>>>> house of fiction]?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But, she doesn't get her story. This is
>> when the
>>>> room was filled with too much kindness and Doc had
>> learned
>>>> that "kindness without a price tag came along only
>> rarely,
>>>> and when it did was usually too precious to
>> accept".
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Without abusing it, which Doc 'was bound
>>>> to"....Why?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If Doc is the hippie of good will
>> Everyman, why
>>>> does TRP give him this aspect, this lack of
>> character? Part,
>>>> along with the entry of heroin, of the inherent
>> vice of
>>>> hippies (in gneral)....Bound to abuse the kindness
>> shown
>>>> them?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Or is Doc "unreliable" here?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
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>>>>
>>>>
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