Re: IVIV: Chapter Five—Head 'em off at the Past ! ! !

[Robin Landseadel]

On Sep 10, 2009, at 11:03 PM, Joseph Tracy wrote:
>
> Considering the last chapter's reference to the drug-like territory  
> of Santa Monica the LSD microdot interpretation seems obvious for  
> MICRO but I think a dual meaning is always likely with TRP

yes indeed.

> and the obvious one is the revolution in microtechnology also  
> referred to in the previous chapter with Arpa.

Ditto.

> MICRO-The Modern Institute for Cognitive Repatterning and Overhaul.  
> Kinda works either way,  and if we think of the "mental institute"  
> that captured and is holding  the Jewish Nazi Wolfmann as Capitalism/ 
> CIA/Golden Fang it is characterized by a long involvement in both  
> drug chemistry and computation.

Like I.G. Farben?

> Combined with Wolfmann's interests that gives us 3 of the major  
> bubbles floating the US economy. Drugs(both healthcare, and illegal  
> traffic), Micro( computers, telephones, surveillance, elaborate  
> computerized financial trading) , and Real Estate speculation.
>
> To investigate any area of this world is to enter the mirrored halls  
> of power and the interconnected aspirations that keep the empire  
> going.  Reet forsees digital real estate databases LSD moves from  
> department of Defense and CIA to Rock and Roll Counterculture  
> revolution, and bad trips send them back to the safety of TV and the  
> Burbs.

Excellent Obs. Joseph. I was not aware of any possible alternate  
meanings for the names "Sloane" and "Briggs." Of course, we've had the  
book a little over a month, we should be expecting all sorts of little  
surprises. Because Inherent Vice has a deliberately shallow surface  
it's easy to assume that there's nothing going on below that surface.  
Of course this is a work by Pynchon, such an assumption will not hold  
over time.

> Anyway Doc prints a card that gives him a purchase on some imaginary  
> real real estate and entices Mrs Wolfmann with imaginary money. One  
> of the things we all like about the amoral detective/gameplayer is  
> tis ability to make up lies on the spot that get them through the  
> door. I've noticed over the years that salespeople are the least  
> resistant to a good pitch.  In a sense it is here in the Wolmann  
> manse with its "reverse floorplan" we find out who Wolfmann is  
> modeled after in the mixed up  quote of Robert Moses"Once you get  
> that first stake driven..."  Moses was the NYC master planner of   
> Suburbia. And TRP "pointedly" compares him and his offspring to a  
> vampire in one of his rather wooden jokes. Also referring oddly to  
> NYC is Mrs Wolmann's name Sloane which reminds of Alfred Sloan once  
> head of GM the inventor of planned obsolescence, which fits nicely  
> with suburbia, and master of industrial espionage and management via  
> financial statistics( started famous Sloan school of management).  
> Anybody for a little tantric Yoga with my hot new Buick?
> Nazi armaments chief Albert Speer told a congressional investigator  
> that Germany could not have attempted its September 1939 Blitzkrieg  
> of Poland without the performance-boosting additive technology  
> provided by Alfred P. Sloan and General Motors.[5][6]
>
> Edwin Black writes in his article, "Hitler's Carmaker: The Inside  
> Story of How General Motors Helped Mobilize the Third Reich"[7],  
> about Sloan's support for Nazi Germany:
>
> "For Sloan, motorizing the fascist regime that was expected to wage  
> a bloody war in Europe was the next big thing and a spigot of  
> limitless profits for GM. But unlike many commercial collaborators  
> with the Nazis who were driven strictly by the icy quest for  
> profits, Sloan also harbored a political motivation. Sloan despised  
> the emerging American way of life being crafted by President  
> Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Sloan hated Roosevelt´s New Deal, and  
> admired the strength, irrepressible determination and sheer  
> magnitude of Hitler´s vision."
>
>
> "Alfred Sloan, James D. Mooney, John T. Smith and Graeme K. Howard  
> remained on the General Motors-Opel board . . . in flagrant  
> violation of existing legislation, information, contacts, transfers  
> and trade continued [throughout the war] to flow between the firm's  
> Detroit headquarters and its subsidiaries both in Allied countries  
> and in territories controlled by the Axis powers. The financial  
> records of Opel Russelsheim revealed that between 1942 and 1945  
> production and sales strategy were planned in close coordination  
> with General Motors factories throughout the world.... In 1943,  
> while its American manufacturers were equipping the United States  
> Air Force, the German group were developing, manufacturing and  
> assembling motors for the Messerschmitt 262, the first jet fighter  
> in the world. This innovation gave the Nazis a basic technological  
> advantage. With speeds up to 540 miles per hour, this aircraft could  
> fly 100 miles per hour faster than its American rival, the piston- 
> powered Mustang P51."