Meet the New Boss (Pynchon's THEY or The Firm is Dead)

[alice wellintown]

>
> The "obvious" I was pointing to was Thomas Pynchon's use of marijuana and
> the importance of that subject in the author's work, the high frequency of
> its presence in his novels. That fact that some disbelieve/ignore a
> preponderance of evidence pointing to all this seems to be one of those
> things that always goes boom on the P-List.

Why? The guy smoked pot. So what? He's not running for office, he's an
artist. I see no reason why the P-list or any other group that has an
interest in literature written by Pynchon should go boom when the pot
burns.




>
> When I was speaking of paranoia and Marijuana and Thomas Pynchon I was
> pointing to the little bit of historical record we have concerning the man
> that we have access to right now. I was wondering about the historical
> concordance of the author's citations of "that useful substance" and likely
> levels of access at any given time. Marijuana—as major plot McGuffin—is
> central to both Gravity's Rainbow and Inherent Vice, but so far it's
> marginal in "V."—I just whizzed by a citation of "Panamanian Black" in the
> context of something "ethnic" & "exotic" involving Benny just a little
> before he gets back to street level. I suppose weed was more of a literary
> symbol than a lifestyle when Pynchon was writing "V." I recall a mention of
>  the paucity of product at the time in the intro to "Slow Learner." And
> there is that syndrome of certain imbibers of the chronic to become paranoid
> on the stuff.
>

I'm wit you man.


> Inherent Vice is a "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Stoner" and the Artist
> in question happened to be writing "Gravity's Rainbow."

Cool man, go at it. I never objected to this Larry is P writing GR
because I'm part of some attempt to surpress the obvious fact  that
dope is an important substance in P's works. I just don't agree that
IV is a portrait of P in develpment or P writing GR.



>
> I find that the author wrote the best critique of "V." you could hope to
> find in the intro to "Slow Learner." The dialog is weak. It's hard to be
> concerned with the fate of any of the characters. It's weird and it's
> different but it really doesn't add up to all that much.

Could you connect these dots for me cause I don't read this in that
Introduction. I mean the specifics you note above about V. not the
general put down of his slow learning period.

>
> Call Pynchon's novels what you want—you say Romances, I say Magical Realist
> Historical Satire [there's gotta be a truly awful acronym in there,
> somewhere]—whatever.

The terms don't matter. The american romance term, however, connects
Pynchon to America.


You're looking at stuff that links to New England
> American Fiction centered in the general vicinity of Thomas Pynchon's
> ancestors. I'm looking at more recent stuff that's also in the books. What
> I'm writing about is not related to what you're writing about. And I kinda
> get it—I'm not really gonna "get" "V." till I read "The Education of Henry
> Adams." Ok, but it's not as if you make that sound like some tantalizing
> proposition.

It is a daunting proposition, is what it is. Most ain't up to the
task. You can't just dip into it or read the last few chapters. If you
are interested in developing the thesis about IV being a
auto-biographical work, a portrait of the young artist, Adams is
Pynchon's most important teacher
in his formative years. Don't take my word for it. Read what the
critical literature has to say about Adams and P. Hell, all of done
here is go through the parts of the text that fit like a glove in the
hand we've been dealing with as wew read V..

>
> It seems that most of your discourse is devoted to proving that you're
> smarter that the rest of us, often comically failing in the attempt. Of
> course as a man blogging as a fictional character—some sort of a Republican
> cross-dresser with a kink for Ayn Rand—your postings are naturally afflicted
> with the "Unreliable Narrator." syndrome
>
> On the other hand,  "Alice Wellington" would be the perfect Pynchon Villain.

Yeah, I'm free an easy, but I katjaboyz by the balls.