The Ivory Dentist Dance

[Paul Mackin]

Robin Landseadel wrote:
> On Sep 25, 2009, at 6:28 PM, alice wellintown wrote:
>
>> Pynchon doesn't write about the CIA; he mocks those who waste their
>> time with conspiracy.
>
> At the same time he's writing about the CIA in Inherent Vice, there's 
> no pussyfooting about it this time—times, places, Corporations, people 
> histories. Which makes your argument null.
>
> There's nothing wrong with you having another point of view. You just 
> can't go around telling people what not to read into something, the 
> sorts of information one is not supposed to get out of a book. The CIA 
> isn't the only or the ultimate or the singular thread of Pynchon's 
> writing. I know that.  It just happens to be a thread that interests 
> me. Saying "Pynchon doesn't write about the CIA"—if that isn't overtly 
> stupid then it's  passive-aggressively disingenuous. Maybe the 
> Pynchon's connection to the Hawthornes or Tom's obsession with Rilke 
> will turn out to be bigger fish to fry in the long run, maybe Inherent 
> Vice will be thrown under the wheels of history's Escalade and The 
> Secret Integration emerge as the key that unwinds everything, the 
> Captain Midnight Magic Cabala Decoder Ring. I happened to have lived 
> near the places Pynchon describes in Inherent Vice, they're important 
> sites as regards the CIA's accidental development of the internet.

Anyone in the employ of the CIA who in any way aided and abetted the 
development of the Internet (even accidentally), thereby setting the 
path to  effective keeping of secrets through easy encryption, needs to 
have his cloak and dagger taken away from him.