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

Tue Aug 29 10:41:07 CDT 2017

I would say anybody who can handle Snowcrash can handle GR.

And I would bet that TRP read Leary's Jail Notes while he was in LA (or
Mexico). Like everybody interested in mindful pleasures.

2017-08-29 17:25 GMT+02:00 Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>:

> It also should have crossed your mind that the training wheels comment
> relates to the reader, not the writer. Nobody is saying RAW and Shea
> were Pynchons manque'. It's just that Illuminatus could rightly be
> seen as one of those books--along with Phil Dick, and/or William
> Gibson, and or Neal Stephenson--that a READER grapples with on the way
> to being able to handle Gravity's Rainbow.
>
> On Tue, Aug 29, 2017 at 10:20 AM, Seymour Landnau
> <seymourlandnau at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It crossed my mind that somebody, including me, especially me, might go,
> > "You think Inherent Vice is transcendent and sublime?"  Well, no.  I'm
> not
> > talking about those books, I'm talking about the main three.
> >
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Aug 29, 2017 at 9:13 AM, Seymour Landnau <
> seymourlandnau at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> What's annoying about "Pynchon with training wheels" is the absurd and
> >> noxious suggestion that transcendent writing like Pynchon's can be
> learned.
> >> That with training you can wheel with the wizard.  You can't nobody can.
> >> Whether you believe that his consciousness comes from tiny flashes of
> light
> >> bopping about in his brain, or is channeled from a sixth dimensional
> >> Arcturan, anybody with half a brain would agree that whatever it is it
> is
> >> "god given".
> >>
> >> What makes the writing "divine" isn't its erudition, or the way it
> juggles
> >> vast concepts across the spectrum of human understanding with life's
> terrors
> >> and joys and everyday minutiae.  It's the singular(ity!) way it, the
> writing
> >> I mean, the way it, what's that word that describes the way you sort,
> of,
> >> string words together, in a way, how do you say, that's pleasing but,
> but
> >> what's more, is, it is, what's a word, what's a word, sublime.
> >>
> >> Nobody learns how to be sublime.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Mon, Aug 28, 2017 at 4:49 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
> >> <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> To me "Gravity's Rainbow with training wheels" sounds like a pretty
> good
> >>> description of Illuminatus!
> >>>
> >>> The last year in school all the cool people were reading it (in
> >>> translation). We made music, played theater, took a lot of drugs. And
> Shea &
> >>> Wilson (whose other books like Prometheus Rising or Cosmic Trigger
> were also
> >>> read at that time) provided a reference frame and introduced us to
> authors
> >>> like Lovecraft, Crowley and also Joyce. A-and It took just a couple of
> >>> months before I read my first Pynchon, which was Gravity's Rainbow in
> >>> translation ...
> >>>
> >>> So don't speak ill of Robert Anton Wilson!
> >>>
> >>> While Leary was certainly an ambivalent figure with a number of issues
> >>> (by this I'm not saying that he doesn't have merits in psychology and
> the
> >>> early psychedelic movement),  Wilson always appeared rather likeable
> to me.
> >>>
> >>> Whether Pynchon is actually "influenced" by the writings of Leary
> and/or
> >>> Wilson (here this could only be the case regarding Pynchon II), I do
> not
> >>> know. His writing simply takes place on a higher level.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Am 28.08.2017 um 10:52 schrieb Mark Kohut:
> >>>
> >>> Your " clearly" can't even be proven from what we know and, of course,
> >>> what most want to believe. And as if his habit of making
> "cross-disciplinary
> >>> connections"--wtf is THAT in him besides metaphors-making genius,
> praised
> >>> from Aristotle on as the highest kind of " intelligence".
> >>>
> >>> All of the annotating and criticism exploring P's creative sources and
> >>> jackshit re these guys.
> >>> He is too smart for all of them. Which is one reason THEY admire him.
> >>>
> >>> Wtf is that list in your post, from " music scale" to "control"? Seems
> to
> >>> me like a"junior-grade Pynchon" list satirizing literary criticism.
> >>>
> >>> "Junior-grade Pynchon" per that commenter means it is effectively a
> joke,
> >>> bad Pynchon parody.  Or else like Shakespeare retold for kids.
> >>>
> >>> A--and, I think you've got the dark web in BE about as wrong--although
> >>> again his ambiguous depth of symbolic use is not easily summarized--as
> can
> >>> be.
> >>>
> >>> Sent from my iPad
> >>>
> >>> On Aug 28, 2017, at 12:33 AM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> People often consider Wilson and Shea's The Illuminatus Trilogy to be
> >>> junior-grade Pynchon, as in the link below, where one commenter
> >>> describes it as "Gravity's Rainbow with training wheels".
> >>>
> >>> http://www.librarything.com/topic/32913
> >>>
> >>> On Sun, 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
> >>>
> >>> -
> >>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> >>>
> >>> -
> >>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> >>>
> >>> -
> >>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=nchon-l
> >>> .
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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