So was the conspiracy theory true or just a delusion of housewife?
Yes.
>>24115488what?
>>24115324Maxwell's Daemon
>>24115324It was a waste of time
>>24115725what that meant?
>>24115816Well i liked reading, felt like a fever dream
>>24115324We can't know, sort of the point. Part of Pynchon's whole thing is examining the folly of the whole search for meaning thing that the modernists set us on, in his other books he uses towards greater ends and it is just his plot, character(s) attempts to understand things which can not be understood. Lot 49 is disliked by many because it does not offer much more.
>>24115890who is sorting out the story?making sense/order of the absurdity?
>>24115324Anyone who thinks Oedipa is delusional is an actual retard who should go back. Pynchon has been actively trying to expose different types of conspiracies and psyops which happened after WWII. This book reveals MK Ultra years before some of the files were declassified. Gravity’s Rainbow is about operation paperclip and the fourth reich theory. Bleeding Edge tells us that the key to understand 9/11 is to follow the money and how it’s tied to fake Israeli startups. There are more examples, of course, but I don’t feel like spoon feeding retards.
>>24115921lol. He never "exposes" anything which had not already been published.
>>24115324
>>24115901Cool really liked the discussion about how creating all that generic media ends up generating all those conspiracies, would like to rad other takes that anons have about it
>>24115324Is this a good place to start with Pynchon before commiting to V or Gravity's Rainbow? I've read a lot of post-modern fiction so shouldn't be too lost; just hesitant to start GR because of how fucking long it is.
>>24115324It's true IRL, but not in the book.
>>24115933He exposed MK Ultra LSD experiments on housewives before they were officially revealed, you fucking retard.
>>24116032Is it true?
>>24116013I probably would have dropped Pynchon if I had started with Lot49, I started with GR. In Pynchon's own words:>The next story I wrote was "The Crying of Lot 49," which was marketed as a "novel" and in which I seem to have forgotten most of what I thought I'd learned up till then. Most likely, much of my feelings for this last story can be traced to ordinary nostalgia for this time in my life, for the writer who seemed then to be emerging, with his bad habits, dumb theories and occasional moments of productive silence in which he may have begun to get a glimpse of how it was done.Earlier in the intro he implies Lot49 was one of the downs of the ups and downs in his learning to write but that is in the part for a different story and mostly unrelated so I did not include it. >>24116082No, Pynchon just read the research on Sodium Amytal from the 20s-40s where they did the same experiments as were done in MK-Ultra including attempts at mind control/programming people and giving it to people without their knowledge. If memory serves they even combined it with classical conditioning. All of this had been declassified in the 50s, OSS and British military being Pynchon's primary sources with some private sector stuff thrown in. This part of GR is 100% true.
>>24116107Nice head canon, retard. But two elements point to the fact that your speculations are wrong and what I say is true:>Pynchon mentions LSD which was, in fact, used for MK Ultra on housewives. This is too precise to be coincidental or just something he picked from an older experiment. >Oedipa's doctor is German (or Austrian), he used to be a Nazi and it's implied he was exfiltrated via operation paperclip. Nazis' own mind control experiments inspired MK Ultra/BLUEBIRD/ARTICHOKE.
>>24116191>well documented and easily available information which he certainly read is head cannon>a pair of tenuous connections are fact
>>24116225Not that anon (this is my first post in the thread)The sodium amytal parts you mentioned are true, if you’re that poster who indeed mentionedThe sodium amytal thing shows up more prominently in Gravity’s RainbowI believe anon you’re responding to is also right about Pynchon making clear allusions, too eerily on the mark to be coincidental, about the LSD use in MK-Ultra, plus Operation Paperclip, and even the possible tie between these, in that whole CL49 subplot of Dr. Hilarius feeding neurotic housewives LSD.Probably somehow heard of it on the conspiracy grapevine in those days, conspiracy theories and rumors were a thing in those days, too, even if not as easily supercharged in their transmissibility by the Internet. Example: CIA/spook involvement in Laurel Canyon. Books were written on this years or decades later, and journalistic investigations, but in some part of Frank Zappa’s album “We’re Only In It For the Money” (1968), there’s a funny spoken-word section referring to some hippies being afraid that some CIA spook is creeping around their scenes in Laurel Canyon.Thanks for both your contributions anon, interesting stuff.
>>24115921He's literally a glowie that worked at Boeing during the cold war and married the granddaughter of a US Attorney General. Don't forget his proto-BLM white people bad seething during the Watts Riots. The whole point of TCoL49 was to portray conspiracy theorists after JFK as deluded losers.
>>24116309> The whole point of TCoL49 was to portray conspiracy theorists after JFK as deluded losers.Utterly false, he has clear sympathies for conspiracy theorists, makes clear allusions to real conspiracies in CL49, GR, Bleeding Edge (9/11), Vineland, and Inherent Vice, with I.V. and Vineland both similarly referring to COINTELPRO and fed infiltration of hippies and the countercultural movement. He has clear sympathy for them, you’re misreading it because of your extreme politicization. In IV the conspiracy is very real in the context of the book, too, for instance — the whole institution of the Golden Fang — and is making reference to real conspiracies around the time like CIA involvement in narcotics trafficking into the U.S. through the Golden Triangle, FBI and law enforcement infiltration of various movements as COINTELPRO and affiliated projects again. He just admittedly comes at it from a more leftist-sympathetic angle.
>>24116256>Dr. Hilarius feeding neurotic housewives LSDThat was fairly common in the 60s, up until 68 when LSD was outlawed it was prescribed for a number of things and often touted as a miracle drug. In the US it was 100% legal until 68, anyone could buy it or prescribe it. Same thing happened with MDMA.Opperation Paperclip was known from early on, we just did not have all the details, it was barely hidden from the public and common knowledge by the time Pynchon started writing. Pretty sure it was brought up during the Nuremberg Trials, lots of criticisms about the trials and how many Nazis were escaping persecution by switching sides. Picrel.
>>24116309> Don't forget his proto-BLM white people bad seething during the Watts Riots. I sympathize with your anger by the way, but I also think you’re viewing things from a uniquely very modern Internet-influenced perspective, and also influenced by the general cultural and political atmosphere in the U.S. around now (and also what gets exported to or influences other Western countries), where the shift in the past years to decades (since about Obama, significantly) has been to link “conspiracy theorists” to “the far-right” or “angry conservatives”, Tea Party-type stuff, and making it a bonafide of socially progressive political correctness to be “against conspiracy theories.”In fact, the vibe in the US in modern history for quite a while before that, was that conspiracy theories were affiliated with the left, and with kooky leftists. Suggesting 9/11 was an inside job or somehow was allowed or encouraged by elements of the Bush administration or federal government or intelligence around the Bush era = being one of those “kooky anti-patriotic leftist conspiracy theorists.”Anti-fluoridation of water, anti-vaxxers, also notably anti-Israel sentiments, besides anti-war, anti-Big-Pharma in general, also anti-censorship — these notably were tied with a leftist or progressive-leaning wing, even associated with “the weird naturalist hippies of the left”, before we got the significant shift around the days of Obama of it being affiliated more with “the far-right.” Shit got co-opted.There were and are admittedly figures who weren’t in this mold, they’ve also been there a long time, Alex Jones as a paleocon but who also was railing against the Bush administration and warning of a totalitarian threat coming from that neocon Republican wing, Bill Cooper before that as a constitutionalist patriotic Christian, groups like the John Birch Society. Being against mass immigration into the U.S. or Western countries from poorer nations was also considered leftist, because it was pro-worker, before all the switcheroos and mindfucks and psy-ops from the Democratic Party messaging around Obama’s time. Honestly, I think the real intelligent conspiracy theorists (or conspiracy knowers, really) should consider putting aside some of their differences and talking about things they can both agree on, teaming up on shit that matters to everyone. Call me a cück if you must.Also Pynchon calls out the Israeli connections to 9/11 in B.E. lol, or at minimum suggestion of their heavy surveillance and infiltration of the U.S. at that time. He knows. He’s just more of a leftist.
>>24116331No, it wasn’t common, you lying douchebag. LSD was officially distributed for clinical trials and research. Its use wasn’t common and people — mostly college students and young urbanites — started using it recreationally because the CIA sent Leary and other assets like the Merry Pranksters to promote it and distribute it. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
>>24115324I read this shit in 2021 and it was so unmemorable I don't even know which scene you're referring to. Only memorable moment of the book is when he predicted EDM clubshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxXt2zx7Jwc
>>24116349That anon is actually kind of right, you’re just responding to it very aggressively. Certainly the demographics you’re describing tended more towards doing it, but it was actually pretty goddamned big, was legal in those days and easily distributed, and became an undeniable cultural sensation. It wasn’t just some “underground” thing the whole time, it broke into the public consciousness eventually in the 60s, you still had more conservative or anti-drug people who viewed it as degenerate or dangerous, but it was still a huge sensation for those interested enough to want to try it. Maybe something similar to cannabis in the U.S. nowadays?
>>24116349>>24116423But also you are right that it started significantly from distributed in clinical research and various studies and trials.I think Leary actually was a good and sincere guy in promoting it, he actually thought it could be an amazing tool for beneficial psychological change, a revolution in psychotherapy, although he also admitted its risks (like Hoffman, its creator, who also praised it for these reasons). He did work with the government on the trials at some point, but it seems clear they turned on him because he was thrown in federal prison for years on trumped-up charges of possessing a joint of cannabis, then they outlawed LSD, remember?I think the timeline goes:>CIA is investigating, “Can we use this to brainwash people? What will the effects be?”>gets out of hand, also strongly tied to the anti-war, hippie, and counterculture movements>criminalize it, go after these peopleNixon: “Timothy Leary is the most dangerous man in America.”
>>24116013Vineland is a good place to start I think, if you need a start. I rarely see it discussed here because it's dwarfed by his other works, but I think is equally great.
>>24116349I didn't say common, I said fairly common, they are different. There is a great deal of literature on its use as in psychotherapy going back a decade before Leary. Hoffman and a few others heavily shilled it as well as Sandoz who offered it for free to anyone wanting to do research with it. By the time Leary got on board Huxley and whats his name were already shilling it heavily as well as a good number of others and it was readily available and could be ordered by anyone from magazines by the time Leary and Ram Daas really started shilling it and by that time you already had self styled gurus and alternative medicine sorts "prescribing it.">>24116423>it broke into the public consciousness eventually in the 60s,It was already there by the 60s, quick look:>Time magazine published six positive reports on LSD between 1954 and 1959It was well known.
>>24116453>It was already there by the 60s, quick look:Right, I should’ve said it broke into public consciousness already “by” the 60s. Thanks for the more detailed info, I had a rough and vague outline of the timeline, and of the major names, like those you mentioned, but you filled it in more rigorously and with better details and clarity. I concede your points and your correction.
