Who Ya Gonna Call...

[Jan Klimkowski]

John Burgess writes:
>Second, it would be interesting to see if such experiements (and I don't
>doubt that they could very well have taken place) were done before or
>after publicity hit the West about KGB experiments in parapsychology.  I
>suspect after, as I recall that the erstwhile Sov. intell foax were
>deeply into psychic phenomena (viz. Khirgiz lights for an alternative
>reading).

Our programme - now scuppered by a fat Channel 4 chequebook - would have 
looked at the bizarre Cold War notion of the "psi gap"; the less-famous 
cousin of the missile gap.  Certainly elements within Soviet intelligence 
 were very active in parapsychological matters, eg getting Siberian shamans 
to hex gifts being presented to foreign diplomats and politicians (and both 
Nixon and Carter had famous "turns" in Moscow).  But after speaking to a 
number of (very cagey) psychics formerly employed by the CIA, I came away 
with the strong impression that the  intelligence hounds running the 
American psychic programme used the existence of the Soviet programme as 
justification for continued and increased funding over the decades.  Not an 
unfamiliar idea to Pynchon readers....

Anyway, my own tuppence worth on TP's attitude towards the Other Side is 
that:
i) he's had a long, hard and intimate look at some of the older esoteric 
maps, eg the Golden Dawn Tarot system, and the Pyndustry has never properly 
addressed this;
ii) the GR seance scenes are, at one level, about Their belief that they can 
routinize, banalize and control everything - and about whether there may be 
limits to Their control;
iii) Ditto Pirate's employment as Fantasy Relief for People Who Have 
Important Work To Do.  (Obviously, since he may well be the central 
consciousness of GR, Pirate's role is far more complex than this.);
iv) the Vineland Thanatoids can be read as simply a comment on Tubed-out 
America.  However, with Weed Atman in particular, we find ourselves floating 
in a peculiarly Tibetan deadscape.

Some time ago, Foucault's Pendulum was discussed in the ListWorld.  I 
personally loathe the book because Eco the semiotician is congenitally 
unable to see The Great Templar Conspiracy thru anything other than pomo 
lenses, and the (intentional) result is, simply, Text.  No more, no less. 
 Pynchon seems to  approach all of the Systems he writes about - be they 
metaphysical, hallucinated or transnationally real - with the same passion 
and curiosity as his characters.

Brotherly
jan