Nordhausen, Vietnam, & Pynchon

[George Haberberger]

At 09:43 PM 6/11/96 -0700, Steelhead wrote:
>Andrew Walser notes:
>>        Does Pynchon, I wonder, do much better with the Holocaust?  In
>>GRAVITY'S RAINBOW, he seems content to keep the subject off to the side --
>>a wise decision, perhaps, since I cannot imagine our author exercising for
>>long the kind of restraint that characterizes the work of Primo Levi or
>>Aharon Appelfeld.
>
>This has been bugging me for the past six months or so, as I have burrowed
>deeper and deeper into the role US corporations, politicians, newspapers,
>and financiers played in the rise of the Third Reich and the salvation of
>some of its more vicious supporting cast at war's end. For example,
>Pynchon's many pages on Nordhausen (following both Pokler and Slothrop)
>hardly convey the scope of the atrocity going on there:  forced starvation,
>bodies piling up, stench, beatings, shootings, etc. It's hard to imagine
>Pokler's pleasant lunches in the Nordhausen commissary depicted in GR.

Well, ex-tech writer Pynchon writes what he knows.  Is there any indication
he's done much research on the Holocaust, perhaps he felt it a too well
traveled road, prefering the more fertile fields of the Herero massacres.

>
>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
>

I think Pynchon wrote GR as a metaphor for Vietnam (being concurrent with
it) in a similar vein that Heller wrote Catch 22, and M.A.S.H being a
popular film.  WWII (and Korea) where distant enough to be crititcized,
without being caught in the curent politcal discussion. The whole Herero in
Sudwest Africa scenes, the third world colonies being the outhouse where the
imperialist man can really enjoy a shit, etc, seems to relate as much to
Germans in South Africa as to Americans in Vietnam.

Had he directly attacked Vietnam, he probably would have never been
published. Even 22 years later, where is the great Vietnam War novel, the
subject has only been approached in film's, ranging from Heavy Metal concert
(Platoon) to We Win the Rematch (Rambo)?

George