Pynchon's optimism about WWII

[Paul Mackin]

On Thu, 28 Dec 1995, Paul Mackin wrote:

>   . . . I guess World War I was _rilly_ senseless. 

To once again answer my own scribbling (hopefully justified during this
holiday week, when traffic is light), _GR_ does not seem to view WWI 
negatively in comparison with the present conflict. At the end of "In the 
Zone", the narrator (or is it Clive Mossman himself) reminisces:

"It wasn't always so. In the trenches of the First World War, Englishmen
came to love one another decently, without shame or make-believe, under 
the easy likelihoods of their sudden deaths . . . "

					P.