Critique of mental health in Inherent Vice

The critique of mental health is that it blames the traumatized. Doc in Inherent Vice says that Coy has been going to the right wing mental institution, private because Ronald Reagan closed down all the state institutions. But he kicked heroin. But he keeps going because the right wing sorting out needs refreshers? It's not clear. Maybe he's unstable without his family? Who knows. That psychotherapy is interminable? Maybe it's a good thing to get tune ups, and follow through.

Deaths in Inherent Vice: Glen Charlock (?), El Drano (?), Bigfoot’s partner Victor Indelicato (Prussia, Puck), Rudy Blatnoyd (Crocker Fenway). Do Puck and Adrian die at the end? Not known.

How does Doc make money. He made a little money going to Vegas with Trillian, who had Puck's number. But Hope Harlingen would perhaps pay. Hard to imagine it was enough to float Doc. One person gave him a bogus credit card for payment. Yet he doesn't want money from Crocker Fenway (movie)?

It took me 8 days to read, took one day off. One of my favorite books now. I watched the movie twice, but I wish I'd waited till after I read the book, though honestly then the movie wouldn't have been as good.

Reddit has the first summary and questions for chapters 1 and 2. What is the connection with the '68 Paris Riots? I didn't know, so I had to look it up. They almost overthrew the government. Will we ever overthrow the government? In recent history in the USA, there was almost an overthrow of the election of the middle of the road politician in favor of a right wing autocratic one.

Came across this article by Pynchon: A Journey Into The Mind of Watts. Also this recent comment on IV: The Sea of Memory and Forgetfulness: Inherent Vice and the Figurations of Fossil Capital.

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Manet and Degas

Brilliant video explaining the exhibit. Go to the Met and see the exhibit! It's really quite special. In the last gallery the painting this sketch is based off of, of the execution of a Mexican president. The painting has been cut into sections, and the surviving Degas has reassembled them. NY Times review

movie versus book

I'm watching the movie a second time, and I'm halfway through the book. Among the movie's differences from the book. Sortilege starts off narrating. The movie doesn't have the school bell for the phone either, just a regular ring. It's really weird the way Doc shouts when he sees the photo of Amethyst as a baby. I guess it's to dramatize the negative impact of being pregnant and using, but the child we see looks pretty healthy. The child doesn't huff out because they're boring like she did in the book. Superficially The Big Lebowski and Inherent Vice are similar but it's a completely different style of narrative. The Coen brothers are amazing, they have a very witty movie that I have loved for a long time. Pynchon is a whole other realm of fiction, and this conversion is fairly faithful, taking out the best lines and making it more compact. The audio book is 15 hours, the movie is 2 hours. Anyway, I like the different movies for different reasons. T...

Introduction

Robert B. Palmer's introduction to his translation of Walter F. Otto's Dionysus: Myth and Cult (p. ix-xi) Gods of Hellas, gods of Hellas, Can ye listen in your silence? Can your mystic voices tell us Where ye hide? In floating islands, With a wind that evermore Keeps you out of sight of shore? Pan, Pan is dead. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING The Dead Pan W H E N Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote these lines which sound so pessimistic and so limited to any lover of the beauty and truth of Greek mythology, she had in mind a famous passage out of Plutarch's De Oraculorum defectu {Mor. 419 A-E) in which it was reported on good authority that Pan had died. But let Plutarch tell the story (Philip is speaking): As for death among such beings [i.e., deities], I have heard the words of a man who was not a fool nor an impostor. The father of...

Motley Kamuka

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