Ghosts in VL

[Robin Landseadel]

On Dec 18, 2008, at 3:51 PM, John Bailey wrote:

> The notion of haunting is big in VL. People are haunted by ghosts of
> their past, there's the Thanatoids, and the media itself is figured as
> a spectral, otherworldly place which at times collides with  
> reality. . .

Two things I'm tracking in all of Pynchon's books that don't seem to  
be getting much traction elsewhere: the engagement of the realm of  
ghosts and the spirit world with this world and and a great many  
specifics concerning the occult in general. Even though I've never  
gone into "V." with the sheer obsessiveness I've brought to the other  
novels, I find the same thread of haunting in Stencil's pursuit of V  
echoed in Oedipa's quest for the Tristero. Slothrop is barraged by  
hauntings, and [the now late] Brigadier Pudding pops up in a seance,  
coming up with the most egregiously awful food concepts. In the three  
most recent books the theme of ghosts [and the attendant arcana of  
spiritualists] is even more in the foreground.

I realize that speculating on a life with such a small sampling of data 
—Thomas Pynchon's life, that is—is doomed to failure. Still, there  
must be something about being haunted that the author found striking  
enough to include as a major theme in all of his books. This quote  
from the introduction to "Slow Learner" illuminates things, but only a  
little:

	Since I wrote this story I have kept trying to understand entropy,
	but my grasp becomes less sure the more I read. I've been able
	to follow the OED definitions, and the way Isaac Asimov
	explains it, and even some of the math. But the qualities and
	quantities will not come together to form a unified notion in my
	head. It is cold comfort to find out that Gibbs himself anticipated
	the problem, when he described entropy in its written form as
	"far-fetched ... obscure and difficult of comprehension." When I
	think about the property nowadays, it is more and more in
	connection with time, that human one-way time we're all stuck
	with locally here, and which terminates, it is said, in death.
	Certain processes, not only thermodynamic ones but also those
	of a medical nature, can often not be reversed. Sooner or later
	we all find this out, from the inside.

The one little inclusion—"it is said" really changes that one sentence:

	When I think about the property nowadays, it is more and more
	in connection with time, that human one-way time we're all
	stuck with locally here, and which terminates, it is said, in death.

And then there's the epigram that kicks off Gravity's Rainbow:

	Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation.
	Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me,
	strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence
	after death—Wernher von Braun