Pynchon and War

[Brian D. McCary]

Walser asks:
Does Pynchon, I wonder, do much better with the Holocaust?

and Steely adds:
A similar question can be asked about Vietnam.

	I've always interpreted Pynchon as being fairly amoral, not seeing
war as inherantly evil but rather the unfortunate consequences of the 
societal system.  Certainly in the V, COL49, and GR, there is an extended
scientific metephor, which doesn't really allow for moralistic value 
judgements.  It's not that he isn't sypathetic with the victims of war.
I think he just sees them as having been in the wrong place at the wrong
time.

	Another way to express this is that I don't think he sees peace
as much more positive than war.  War shows you who the players are and 
whose side they are on, but the power brokers and conglomerates he writes
about are just as active during peace, and much less visable.  IG Farben
existed and manipulated long before WWII, and GE (among others) contines
to try to infiltrate all of American and world culture.  Why should he
speak out against the war when the war, in his view, may be just a symptom
of a much more insideous problem?

	A third angle on this is that when TRP writes about war, it's a bit
like a science professor discussing the physics of Ted Williams hitting
a home run at the atomic and molecular level.  It's not that the home run
doesn't count, but at that level, it doesn't look much differant from Jimmy
hitting a foul ball in little league.  I'm glad everyone doesn't take this
approach, but I'm equally glad he doesn.

Brian McCary