Pynchon mention in CHAOS review

[David Morris]

Re. Manson, it you haven't yet seen Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, I think
you'll like it.

David Morris

On Wed, Jan 29, 2020 at 4:04 PM rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:

> Despite misgivings about the Manson hype and the nutcases it attracts, I
> was pleasantly surprised by how good Chaos was. The hoops Manson was able
> to jump through, the breaks he got to avoid or leave prison does lead one
> to believe someone might have been running him within the LAPD and/or
> federal authorities. As you say Thomas, what is incontrovertible is the
> CIA/LSD experiments--it's nasty and shameful history
> and it confirms even more what a total shit Bugliosi was
>
> rich
>
> On Wed, Jan 29, 2020 at 4:49 PM Thomas Eckhardt <
> thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de>
> wrote:
>
> > 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.
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>