V.V. (12) "tendrils"

[jbor]

>From the 'Introduction' to the _Slow Learner_ collection:

    ... I was more concerned with committing on paper a variety of
    abuses, such as overwriting. I will spare everybody a detailed
    discussion of all the overwriting that occurs in these stories,
    except to mention how distressed I am at the number of tendrils
    that keep showing up. I still don't know for sure what a tendril
    is. I think I took the word from T.S. Eliot. I have nothing against
    tendrils personally, but my overuse of the word is a good example of
    what can happen when you spend too much time and energy on words
    alone. ...            [p. 15]

I think a tendril is that thin, curly green part of plant that is neither a
leaf nor a stem. Here is Pynchon's passage in this section of _V_:

      Back here Mondaugen could also see down into a kind of inner
    courtyard. Sunlight, filtered through a great sandstorm far away
    in the desert, bounced off an open bay window and down, too bright,
    as if amplified, into the courtyard to illuminate a patch or pool of
    deep red. Twin tendrils of it extended to a nearby doorway. Mondaugen
    shivered and stared. ...
                           [235.28]

The tendrils are rivulets of blood (cf. the "cries of pain" at 236.22) and
the image itself is a vivid one. I like the synaesthesia of the word
"amplified" here also, relating as it does to Mondaugen's sferics work and
his heightened aural awareness.

Q. What of Pynchon's self-laid charge of "overwriting"? The appropriateness
of the word "tendril" here notwithstanding, is there evidence of
"overwriting" in _V._ (eg. the long passage describing Kurt's encounter with
Hedwig Vogelsang at 239.2)? Is such "overwriting" -- here or in the later
novels -- actually (often? sometimes? always?) a stylistic decision made to
serve thematic ends?

best