Africans in GR

[Heikki Raudaskoski]

Interestingly, there has just come out this German book (I just
glimpsed at it in passing when I was visiting John Krafft's 
wonderful archives): 

Selmeci, Andreas & Henrichsen, Dag:
_Das Schwarzkommando: Thomas Pynchon und die Geschichte der Herero_.
Bielefeld: Aisthesis 1995.

I can read German if I have to, but maybe someone who is more fluent in 
the language could read the book and write a short review for the list?

To put in my two cents -- I even feel myself responsible for that as 
someone who suggested this L.A. reading some time ago (good to hear, 
Nick, that you find it interesting) -- I consider _GR_ an assemblage of 
oscillative movements between displacements and placements,
deterritorializations and reterritorializations, anachronisms and 
topicalities. 

With the Schwarzkommando, e.g., Pynchon's novel works *at least* duplexly, 
making a tense comment on both the German imperialism in Africa, and the
Civil Rights Movement of the sixties -- but the novel does not *take away*
anything from the specific and urgent respect it has for the black people
in both situations: no, in my view the duplexity in a way *intensifies* the 
respect for these oppressed people in both historical situations. (What 
is more, the WWII was, among other things, already an important factor in 
the genealogy of the Civil Rights Movement, as is widely known: African-
Americans returning from the War where they had experienced a greater 
parity with white people, only to find the same old shit in their old home
towns  -- all this was vital to the development of the racial situation in
the fifties and sixties. And, obviously, the situation of the Herero tribe
points to the Holocaust and Vietnam, too, among other things.)     

When I started the L.A. thread some time ago, I had the feeling that
these things had beem discussed already, but I guess what I really was
remembering was the essay by Frederick Ashe in _Pynchon Notes_ 28-29:
"Anachronism Intended:_Gravity's Rainbow_ in the Sociopolitical Sixties".
Ashe concentrates on the similarities between the Hereroes and African-
Americans in the sixties, referring largely to Pynchon's "Watts" article.
The essay is well worth reading.

However, my emphasis will be a bit different, if I ever manage to make
anything out of my hypothesis: I want to go into the structural 
importance of both  the closed figure (Zhlubb's *obvious* Northern route 
on the freeways) and the number eight, or two systems connected with the 
Santa Monica interface, when we include all the freeways that the text 
mentions. (You cannot skip easily that close reading - starting form the 
hypothesis that both what the text mentions and what it leaves unmentioned
may be of importance -- but you have to be ready to face the fact that this
close reading will very possibly not amount to some New Critical order. 
- But I guess that touching points between Zhlubb and Blicero, e.g., may 
prove more intensive this way.)

So perhaps what I'm after is some kinda tense give-and-take between the
specific possibilities in the L.A. situation and the larger 
possible structurations, "general economy", in the text that I love more 
than any other text, but then again, have mercy on me, I haven't read _IJ_.

Heikki