V-2nd, Chap 7

[Robin Landseadel]

On Sep 28, 2010, at 5:33 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:

> This makes sense for "all these books" you named plus Gravity's  
> Rainbow.
>
> But also for CoL49 or V?
>
> In both of them nature does not exactly come over as "Gaia" or your  
> latest acid dream with
> sparkling galaxies in every blossom.
>
> It's more like the author wasn't interested much in nature at that  
> time.
>
> And IF Pynchon makes nature a "character" in those early books, it's  
> not necessarily a
> benignant one:
>
> Check out the "waterspout" in V's final paragraph!
>
> I guess that there is no 'intelligent design' on this planet.
>
> KFL
>
> PS: Just had another look at CoL49 and found Oedipa's meditation on  
> the Pacific ("the
> umimaginable") in chapter three which is foreshadowing the surfer- 
> cosmology from
> VL and IV, but in V (or the early stories) these traces of  
> Californication cannot be found,
> as far as I can see. So what's young Pynchon's attitude towards  
> nature?

Good question, good point.

I suspect that young TRP had a little exposure to Maryjane and  
relatively little to the world at large. I do believe the tipping  
point can be found in some parts of The Crying of Lot 49. I've posted  
this line so many times you can understandably confuse this with OCD,  
but here goes:

	"Mucho," she said, impatient but also flirting with a wild suspicion.  
"Is this what
	Punch means when he says you're coming on like a whole roomful of  
people?"
	"That's what I am," said Mucho, "right. Everybody is." He gazed at  
her, perhaps
	having had his vision of consensus as others do orgasms, face now  
smooth,
	amiable, at peace. She didn't know him. Panic started to climb out of  
a dark
	region in her head. "Whenever I put the headset on now," he'd  
continued, "I
	really do understand what I find there. When those kids sing about  
'She loves
	you,' yeah well, you know, she does, she's any number of people, all  
over the
	world, back through time, different colors, sizes, ages, shapes,  
distances from
	death, but she loves. And the 'you' is everybody. And herself.  
Oedipa, the
	human voice, you know, it's a flipping miracle." His eyes brimming,  
reflecting the
	color of beer.

It looks like insanity but "those who know, know" and if one gets the  
"Gnostic Message" of Sandoz's best, then there will be a therapeutic  
breakthrough. At least that was what psychiatrists/ psychotherapists  
thought they were doing with the stuff back in 1964. What it seemed to  
be was God [the big "G" stands for "PAY ATTENTION!!!"] in a bottle,  
though later experiments seemed to point to Pandora.

So that's the glimmer of the vision, and that vision sounds  
suspiciously Gaian, though Lovelock's Gaia was not yet between the  
covers so to speak. Of course, LSD is all over Gravity's Rainbow,  
surprise, surprise. But Pynchon regularly makes the Gnostic/Visionary/ 
Chemical/Shamanic connections from this point forward and is rather  
specific about the whole thing in Inherent Vice.

Now, making the visionary connection to nature is a stretch for most,  
but simply in terms of his awareness of the physical world beyond the  
public library, moving to California [with earlier side excursions to  
Mexico] exposed the author to remaining bits of "Vineland the Good." I  
know he regularly took trips to the Bay Area by 1964, I spoke to a  
lady that made him Tuna Casserole [which he loved, she sez] and  
witnessed the birth of "San Narcisco" as they approached the freeway  
sign that says "South San Francisco."

I'm sure that by 1990, he saw where all that was heading. I know I  
was, I was in the thick of it.

> On 27.09.2010 21:50, Robin Landseadel wrote:
>> Consider, if you will, the when and where of Thomas Pynchon.
>>
>> Inherent Vice gives a few clues. Gaia seems to be major backwash of  
>> the "Acid Experience." Just ask Sortilège. One can argue as much as  
>> one wants concerning the intellectual validity of the LSD  
>> experience. But when you see the trees breath, when the concept of  
>> "the gnostic experience" in all its dubiousity and gloriosity  
>> inundates your senses, sense and sensibility takes a back seat to  
>> the vision.
>>
>> As to "What Happened????" a lot of that wound up in Pynchon's  
>> books. But look at Vineland closer, look at Inherent Vice closer,  
>> look at Against the Day and Mason & Dixon. Those shamans, those  
>> drug dealers, those -- Yes -- witches. They didn't wind up in those  
>> books by accident, they certainly didn't land there because TRP was  
>> building an intellectual argument concerning the Romantic tradition  
>> of American literature in the middle of the 19th century. Earth,  
>> one way or another , is a living being in all these books, one of  
>> the characters. Post Acid, Post-Moonshot, Post-World War II.  
>> Post-"The Bomb."
>>
>> If anyone was/is a creature of the times, it's Pynchon.