Was Pynchon influenced by Leary, R.A. Wilson?

[Mark Kohut]

Yes, thought: Major category mistake, as they say. Thomas Pynchon is an artist, one of the best of our time, creating fictions with full visions of life, parts of life and his time; full of historical meaning yet shimmering with ultimate ambiguity and depth. Maybe endlessly rereadable --as is said of Shakespeare and a few others--and with no prescriptions for living. Keep cool, but care maybe, but even that by a character.

The others are not. 

Sent from my iPad

> On Aug 27, 2017, at 11:18 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> 
> I have been reading Robert Anton Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger( 1 and 3) and am now starting into some Leary writing, which I found one of the more interesting parts of the Trigger books. Leary was more scientific than he is credited with, though clearly was left in the lurch by the outlawing of the intriguing chemistry brain interaction  which is one of the most fascinating in nature’s pharmacy and deserves open scientific, therapeutic and artistic inquiry. 
> 
> Clearly P experimented with the same substances and has the same habit of making cross disciplinary connections as Leary and Wilson: music scale, male female electro chemistry, poetry as code, alchemy, tarot, communication accross time, psychology-science-political power games-control vs. freedom. Both use humor in powerful ways, and Wilson read and admired P and Joyce enormously. The main philosophic difference seems to be along the lines of pessimism/ optimism for the human condition. Leary/Wison see the potential to break non-functional conditioning whereas P sees those habits as more pervasive and operating on dangerous feedback loops. For P redemption/liberation/clarity is rare and individual with little impact on the macrocosm. On the other hand, there is an arc of movement toward optimism since GR. 
> 
> At the end of bleeding edge we are dropped off in a dangerous world made worse by the police state approach to IT , but with a nodding invitation of a departure into the  Deep web as an outpost of free exchange, ghosts and new games. The internet and virtual reality were intriguing frontiers to Leary/Wilson also. 
> 
> Any thoughts on a Leary, Pynchon, Wilson connection
> 
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> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l