IVIV (7): He's So Heavy

[John Bailey]

Sportello becomes a human doorway; fits the name. He also ends up
three feet tall and this transformation lingers a while after the
trip. I guess one of the unrevealed aspects of his personality is a
kind of anxiety about his (real) small stature, which is mentioned
elsewhere in the book I think. Plus he has that anxiety about his
littleness in a more figurative sense, with his grudging envy of his
more successful big brother.

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 7:49 AM,  <malignd at aol.com> wrote:
> This seems to me hopelessly muddled,  both by Pynchon and by LK.
>
> Kekule (day-)dreamed (supposedly) of the tail-biting snake and that dream
> suggested to him the structure of the benzene molecule.  No one "used" the
> "dream," except Kekule, and in an entirely positive way, at least so far as
> he was concerned.
>
> That it was used in the creation of dye stuffs and plastics makes it, I
> think, a negative in the value system that Pynchon constructs within the
> world of GR; whether negative in the world in which we live is a subjective
> judgment, depending mostly on how you think of plastic and the way we use
> it.  For better or worse, most of the world seems to have happily embraced
> it.  Certainly we're using it with little complaint ...
>
> In what world do you think there was a necessary co-opting of mysticism or
> the dream state or the gaia principle (whatever that is) for technology and,
> by extension, "the corporate, the capitalistic" to take advantage of what
> science offered?  Certainly no co-opting of the "sweet hippie thing," some
> one hundred years before there were hippies.
>
> 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: kelber at mindspring.com
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Sent: Mon, Sep 28, 2009 2:28 pm
> Subject: Re: IVIV (7): He's So Heavy
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 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.
>>
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