IVIV (8): An Occasional Certified Zombie

[Joseph Tracy]

Good stuff!
On Sep 29, 2009, at 10:26 AM, Dave Monroe wrote:

> "... populated day and night with the insomniac, the stranded and
> deserted, not to mention an occasional certified zombie."  (IV, Ch. 8,
> p. 115)
>
>
> "an occasional certified zombie"
>
> Cf. ...
>
> The Thanatoids: Like Death, Only Different
>
> Another mystery, that of the Thanatoids, is a bit easier to figure.
> Pynchon muddies the water by giving us overlapping, contradictory data
> about these ghost-like characters. Literally, the term means "like
> death, only different," hence living-dead, or zombies. At other times
> Pynchon tells us that Thanatoids watch lots of TV, and try to advance
> further into the condition of death. Under this definition they could
> be Reaganites, couch potatoes, embittered hippies, or possibly the
> entire population of America.
>
> Thanatoids are also "victims of karmic imbalances -- unanswered blows,
> unredeemed suffering..." So does this make the Thanatoids victims of
> the sixties? Another version of the preterites* in Gravity's Rainbow?
> Or simply over-determined ghosts? Thanatoids are injured by "what was
> done to them." This might make them Vietnam vets, or a larger set of
> America's victims. At one point Pynchon describes them as a "lost
> tribe with a failed cause," which makes us think of the Herreros and
> the gauchos in Gravity's Rainbow. And as the book is drawing to a
> close, Pynchon says, "What was a Thanatoid, at the end of the long
> dread day, but memory?"
>
> [*The term "preterite," is a Calvinist theological reference meaning
> "those passed over by God, or those not elected to salvation or
> eternal life." Thus, a preterite is anyone living life with no promise
> of redemption -- the true condition of everyone who faces life
> honestly. Pynchon's compassion for these universal losers is central
> to his work.
>
> The term does not appear in Vineland, but the concept does -- and in
> any case, Pynchon uses it loosely. Since he's not really a Calvinist
> (nor, we suspect, a Believer in any conventional way), he often uses
> the concept to describe those without power. Vond, who has power, is
> elected. Zoyd, who doesn't really have power, is preterite -- as are
> the Thanatoids. DL and Takeshi, who have at least some power, are
> somewhere in between.
>
> On an even simpler level, Pynchon believes in Good (Preterite) Things
> and Bad (Elect) Things. Good Things include musicians, Hohner F harps,
> ukuleles, hip forties slang, zoot suits, dope, etc. (This clearly
> makes Zoyd, DL, and Takeshi Good/Preterite.) Bad Things includes
> power, the elite, Reagan politics, etc. (Vond is clearly Bad/Elect.)
> What makes tragedy and suspense is that there are things (and
> particularly people) that are both, or in between, or of unknown
> quality. Frenesi has both good and bad qualities; Zuniga does too.]
>
> We think the Thanatoids are not meant to be taken as "real" characters
> at all, but as a literary representation (all right, make that
> "symbol," goddammit) of the failed dreams of living people (or
> societies). Also great disappointments, missed opportunities,
> Unfinished Business, and/or awful unredeemed mistakes. These
> particular Thanatoids exist because the history of the sixties has
> been stolen, and falsified. Reclaiming that history may let them rest
> (or even party) at last.
>
> http://www.mindspring.com/~shadow88/intro.htm
>
> "'Wandering all up and down the halls'"
>
> That's why what's buried always returns: even if hideously decayed,
> and even if only in bits and pieces. The flesh is more than willing,
> though the spirit is all too weak. The "afterlife" is a wholly
> material phenomenon: it concerns the body, and not the soul. Today we
> fear the subsistence of the flesh, more than we do its annihilation.
> The great terror in George Romero's "living dead" trilogy is not being
> killed, but being unable to stay dead, being compelled to return as
> one of them. Postmodern space swarms with the Undead. Zombies throng
> our city danger zones, our suburban backyards, our shopping malls.
>
> http://www.dhalgren.com/Doom/ch05.html
>
> Capitalism is a parasitic system, and Romero’s zombies are the
> ultimate manifestations of this parasitism. Shaviro writes:
>
> They are the long-accumulated stock of energy and desire upon which
> our ilitarized and technocratic culture vampiristically feeds, which
> it compulsively manipulates and exploits, but cannot forever hope to
> control. (94)
>
> The zombies are the silenced majority who bought into the ideology of
> the ruling class. They are the laborers who have been exploited and
> alienated from their product, and they are the consumers who have been
> led down the road of accumulation and assimilation. While they seem to
> uphold their individuality [...] they undermine and usurp these
> negligable differences. The power is drained from their individuality,
> and they are all after the same goal: to satisfy their hunger (Shaviro
> 84). Romero has commented that he was attracted to zombies because
> they are the "underclass of the monster world" (Beard 30). Beard
> extrapolates this to view the zombies as "the disenfranchised
> underclass of the material world;" they are a "stand in for those
> workers and consumers who ... have been thrown on the  scrap heap"
> (30).
>
> If the zombies seem foreign to us, it is only because we do not want
> to see ourselves. [...] Logan notes, "They are us. They are the
> extensions of us." Indeed, they exhibit consumer desire and they are
> drawn to places we are drawn to, such as malls, homes, and bastions of
> civilization. Their desire is insatiable. Shaviro writes, "Want is a
> function of excess and extravagence, not of deficiency: the more I
> consume, the more I demand to consume" (92). Likewise, the zombies
> become enraged when presented with a "fresh" meal of live humans, and
> they are content to stumble around for eternity, looking for another
> bite. Indeed, the zombies are not a foreign invader, but the
> ressurected dead of late consumer capitalism.
>
> http://www.wdog.com/rider/writings/romero.htm
>
> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0311&msg=87431