BtZ42

[Mark Kohut]

A person named Henry Noble posted this on FB WASTE Group. If we got this
far, I too had a note about 'the maniac bent on suicide' reminding me of
Neal from this work. This person seems to have lightly matched
some description from Wolfe to P's words, which is real fine to know.
And re Rilke, do we have even any associative ideas of when P's reading led
to Rilke? Deep by GR, we know, but not too evident in any work before?
Electric Kool Aid Acid Test was published BIG in 1968, full of the
unfolding of America, so to speak.  Since we think he read 'everything', P
surely read it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Electric_Kool-Aid_Acid_Test



Neal Cassady in Gravity's Rainbow?
Neal Cassady was a counter culture icon, often defined by his role in Jack
Kerouac's "On The Road" and later was a key figure in the birth of the
psychedelic movement, most famously as the driver of Ken Kesey's
psychedelic bus, documented in The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test by Tom
Wolfe. If you look at page 412 of GR, the narrative shifts briefly to "a
bus driven by a maniac bent on suicide". What follows is description of a
maniac bus driver, and a running dialog from the bus's speaker system which
is very similar to Wolfs description of Cassady. There is also a
description of the countryside "..whose light is forever
changing..different shapes and colors come and go." Could describe the view
out of the bus under the influence LSD "...but there is meanwhile this trip
to be on." this brief narrative ends with a a quote from Rilke that is
posted on the bus. One of Kesey's friends, and the Grateful Dead songwriter
Robert Hunter was a translator of Rilke and would hang Rilkes work in
Kesey's house. He was also part of the early group of students that the CIA
gave LSD to Kesey and (fictionally) Mucho Maas.
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