Who ya gonna call...

[Jan Klimkowski]

Communion with the dead as another Pynchonian device?  Hmmmm....

In his 1984 book, "Psychic Warfare: Threat or Illusion", Martin Ebon 
discusses some of the published offerings of "ex-CIA employee Victor 
Marchetti, who wrote several books on his fourteen years with the agency."

Ebon continues: '"Marchetti, who tends to be critical of the CIA's 
activities, has said that it once sought to establish mediumistic 
communication with spirits of agents who had died.  He recalled that the 
agency's 'scientific spooks' were 'progressing into parapsychology, 
experimenting with mediums in efforts to contact dead agents, with psychics 
in attempts to divine the intentions of the Kremlin leadership, and with 
even stranger phenomena." Marchetti asserted that the CIA had tried to make 
contact, through a medium, with Oleg Penkovsky, a colonel in the Soviet Army 
who had been one of its most valuable contacts during his lifetime...... 
 Marchetti said that, after Penkovsky had been executed, someone in the CIA 
had said, "Why don't we try to contact him?" and that this suggestion had 
led to the agency's becoming "involved with mediums".  He said, "They began 
to contact our own dead agents, as well as dead agents from the other 
side."'

Gorgeous other side to round it off there, methinks.

For what it's worth I spent some lil' time researching this story until we 
got outbid by another telly channel, who are running the programme as, 
surprise surprise, "The Real X-Files".  I haven't got the dates of 
Marchetti's books to hand to see whether they're pre-GR or not.  Anyway, 
yawn, of course Pynchon uses the occult as another System but, like Them, 
there's always far more to his Systems than mere pomo posturing.

And now, a request.  Thanks to MicroSnot E-Mail, I have no idea who sent the 
recent IG Farben postings.  Anyway, I've just run into something new and 
rather worrying about the Farben offspring; if anybody in the ListWorld 
knows their way around the current generation of Farben's bastard children 
I'd be most grateful for some Off-ListWorld guidance.

Fleetingly
jan

jan.klimkowski at bbc.co.uk