The Ivory Dentist Dance

[Mark Kohut]

Pynchon writes about conspiracy and spying everywhere. Even, especially? OVERTLY, in a detective story.

--- On Fri, 9/25/09, Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:

> From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: The Ivory Dentist Dance
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Friday, September 25, 2009, 10:28 PM
> 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. And remember
> Doc's concerns, wondering why haven't they made this stuff
> illegal yet, like LSD?
> 
> 
> We're past conspiracy here Alice—we're hip deep in
> history, the sort of history most people seem to want to
> know more about these days.
>