IVIV (7): He's So Heavy

[John Bailey]

But plastics are kinda outside the 'natural' processes of entropy, not
breaking down unless you want to take a really, really long view of
things. A bit like nuclear waste that way, maybe. Hard to see Pynchon
being particularly fond of the man-made stuff that virtually violates
natural laws that way.

Plastic doesn't have an inherent vice (physically), perhaps? Cast in
that light (I'm just suggesting), maybe inherent vice isn't a negative
thing in P's universe. Breaking down, intermingling with the Other,
simply possessing faults... all of these seem like positive
characteristics in his novels, including when applied to the human.

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 12:45 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
> On Sep 28, 2009, at 5:49 PM, 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 ...
>
> Got a plastic cased mac sitting in front of me, I like computers , but I
> like gardening more and it does me more good. Pynchon is using the breaking
> of cyclic biological limits as a metaphor for an unsustainable act of the
> imagination , the embrace of an artificial immortality, the cherished notion
> that if we can break these limits and reassemble a new kind of world then
> why not cheat death itself, or at least use our power of life and death to
> preserve the glorious defiers of limits , the masters of technology.
>  Kekules understanding of the carbon bonds was used, and used with wild
> abandon. Benzene, the sweet smelling carcinogen, and its  artificial
> children entered the life blood of the planet and while plastic cups and
> artificial rubber seemed like a good idea at the time, the whole
> petrochemical death count is pretty staggering and ya gotta wonder right now
> if it's worth it.   The image that follows this passage in GR of a mad bus
> driver headed gleefully for destruction while cajoling the bus-riders seems
> increasingly prophetic. I can understand your point that plastic itself is
> not the negative thing or Kekules revelatory dream, but somehow it does not
> evade "the meanness, the cynicism, with which it is to be used".
>
>>
>> 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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