Specters Of Communication: Supernatural Media In Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow

Abstract

This paper addresses the relationship between spiritual communion and technological communications in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow . I argue that Pynchon deploys spiritualist imagery as an analogue for the complexities of modern communication, which displaces the human subject from its self-designated role as creator and/or controller of information. While many scholarly ventures into Pynchon's work tend to downplay the importance of his supernatural imagery, I contend that the supernatural plays an important role in his fiction even at the formal level, from which the novel appears to its readers as a kind of spirit board.