Pynchon mention in CHAOS review

[Thomas Eckhardt]

I intended to write a longer piece on this book, especially Reeve 
Whitson, but for now this will have to do.

This is from a review of Tom O'Neill's "CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA 
and the Secret History of the Sixties":

"In fairness O’Neill is an endearing figure and comes across like the 
sleepy PI Elliot Gould plays in Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973). 
He’s a dazed presence straight from the pages of Thomas Pynchon, trapped 
in a real-life version of Inherent Vice (2009) and struggling, in 
Pynchon’s words, to avoid giving us an “unabridged paranoid hippy 
monologue”. But when I got to the end of this book I went back to the 
start, then I stopped and I thought: would I read it again? Probably not."

https://thequietus.com/articles/27107-tom-o-neill-chaos-charles-manson-cia-mkultra-review

I find this quite unfair. The book is based on solid research, and the 
implications of the CIA employing counterinsurgency/MK ULTRA methods 
against domestic opposition are endless.

Me, I would surely read "CHAOS" again, just like I would "The Family" 
and "The Shadow Over Santa Susana."

I especially heart Tom O'Neills reluctance to draw the conclusions that 
might seem obvious to the more paranoid among us because, as much as he 
must have tried, he cannot prove them. What O'Neill *can* prove about 
Reeve Whitson and Jolly West and Roger Smith and their links to Charlie 
Manson, however, is enough to set the mind a-reeling, hippy or not.