Nordhausen, Nam, & TRP

[JM]

Steely writes:

A similar question can be asked about Vietnam. Where is it in Pynchon? Why
didn't America's greatest writer--and one of the leading voices of the
counterculture--use his enormous talents to speak out against the war?
Is it all a complex enthymeme, as Chuck Hollander suggests, lurking there
under the surface of the text, and gaining more force and power through
its absence? Perhaps, but that's not entirely satisfying to me. Any ideas?

Steely

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TRP seems to be trying to expose "root causes" of the trouble rather than 
directly attacking the symptoms, ie things like the holocaust and Vietnam. It's 
aptly called an "octopus" by people like the late Danny Casellero because its 
tentacles reach everywhere.  The more subtle (or more paranoid) writer, 
Pynchon, might be aping Hamlet's approach to opposing a "sea of troubles," 
where at the end of Act III Hamlet promises to "delve one yard below their 
mines / and blow them at the moon."   I had to look up "enthymeme," but 
yeah--it could be that too.                                                   -jm