IVIV (7): He's So Heavy

[kelber at mindspring.com]

But wait, there's more:

GR (p. 419, Penguin):  "Kekule dreams the Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth, the dreaming Serpent which surrounds the World. But the meanness, the cynicism with which this dream is to be used.  The Serpent that announces, 'The World is a closed thing, cyclical,resonant, eternally returning," is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to *violate* the Cycle."

In these three short sentences we get:  the co-optation of mysticism, the dream-state, the Gaia principle, the "sweet hippie thing," if you will, by the corporate, the capitalistic, bent on profit-making above all else.

LK

-----Original Message-----
>From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
>Sent: Sep 28, 2009 1:53 PM
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: IVIV (7): He's So Heavy
>
>On Sep 28, 2009, at 10:41 AM, Joseph Tracy wrote:
>
>> I never had a hallucinogenic experience that sent me into another  
>> world in the sense that Doc describes
>
>I have, which in an odd way makes this scene a little harder to suss  
>out.
>
>> or that people attribute to Salvia etc., but I have had lucidly  
>> remembered dreams that closely approximate Doc's Burgie trip or the  
>> trip in the story with the vision of Shasta on the Golden Fang.
>
>There was a time when my dreams were like that as well.
>
>> I also recall a very similar and very intense experience with a  
>> group of artists in the 70'S doing a collective imagination  
>> experiment. To me it relates more to the archetypes and collective  
>> unconscious of Jung than LSD per se. I think that is more how  
>> Pynchon is using it  and LSD generally and several other  
>> references( Zomes, GNASH)  to openings between parallel worlds.
>
>I recall a guided meditation that led to some of these portals as well.
>
>> In essence, the reason Doc hates the memory of this trip is that it  
>> forms a kind of personal mythos, an explanation for his size and  
>> "heaviness"  which I mentioned in a previous comment:
>>
>>  	"Is the LSD memory of another world from which Doc came and from  
>> which he derives his compactness and  a "density" that has him  
>> breaking through walls, a kind of reference to his ability to  
>> penetrate           	barriers to his investigations, and his focus  
>> on evidence and leads while smoking weed like a chimney?  The whole  
>> story  feels more Jungian than I first perceived but with a  
>> different set of collective 		memories, and while comic in tone, may  
>> be designed as a kind of alternative mythos of the detective story  
>> which will yield treasures to a probing search."
>>
>> It brings up the whole topic of "genius", old souls, individual  
>> destiny, enlightenment, scientific "breakthroughs" , that kinda  
>> shit. Hard to explain the density, the gravitational pull of some  
>> people.  Artists talk about artistic expression as coming to them or  
>> as a kind of birth. Same thing with scientific breakthroughs coming  
>> in dreams or picture language. Not discounting hard work and  
>> learning the language of a discipline here. Doc starts with some  
>> seedy work to learn the chops, but seems increasingly aware of the  
>> karmic implications of what he does.   Einstein starts with pure  
>> play in the realm of the physics of light, indirectly gives birth to  
>> nuclear age and ends up a voice for peace and non-violent  
>> resistance.  Tesla envisions a world made better by cheap clean  
>> electricity , seized by westinghouse to proliferate coal burning  
>> power plants.
>
>Sir William Rowan Hamilton receiving Quaternions in a vision,  
>ultimately leading to computer animation and untold consequences of a  
>more dire variety.
>
>> Similar story with digital tech.  Genius is  easily coopted.  Entropy.
>
>Slothrop's temporal density drawing down V2s.
>
>> Density is probably the central quality of Pynchons writing,
>
>But don't forget chewiness or rich chocolaty goodness . . .
>
>> the detritus of culture takes on the weight  and shiny reflective  
>> brilliance of Osmium. Every word and phrase seeming to work in  
>> parallel universes. Doc feels alienated in world in which he is also  
>> deeply integrated, knows the handshake and everything, likes to hang  
>> out, smoke with friends, watches Basketball, longs for true love and  
>> good sex, but breaks through walls with the slightest pressure.   
>> What he finds behind the facade of individuality, chosen affinities,  
>> addresses and style is a war that is far from overseas. The promised  
>> good guys of the movies are not so easy to identify. Like Wolfmann  
>> and the private collection displayed on his ties (speaking of ties,  
>> what, in the whole panoply of vice is he not tied to), the line  
>> between exploiter and exploited is less than razor sharp.  Typical  
>> for a detective noir, and a satirist.
>
>Typical for Pynchon as well. But you already knew that.
>
>Again, great post.
>