WWII Nazi/American corp. collaboration

[Doug Millison]

>On Thu, 3 Dec 1998, Doug Millison wrote:
>> I guess I'm still wondering if the general outlines of IF Farben's
>> activities and of the cartel with Royal Dutch Shell, Standard Oil of New
>> Jersey, and Imperial Chemical (ICI) in England were known primarily in a
>> limited, specialist realm, and if so can we credit Pynchon with bringing it
>> to light for a broader public?
>
At 12:19 PM -0500 12/3/98, Paul Mackin wrote:
>Not to put too find a point on it but Pynchon is not in a position to
>bring something to a very broad public. He writes high-brow literary
>novels. Now if it were Harold Robbins . . .

I did say "broader public" -- broader than Sasuly's book, I imagine; GR has
sold many hundreds of thousands of copies by now, perhaps it's sold more
than a million. I'm sure Malign's right in saying that book was publicly
available for many years prior to GR, but I don't believe we overstate
Pynchon's insight and creativity in taking some little-known historical
information and weaving it into a fictional tapestry that made this
historical reality available to a far larger number of people in a highly
affecting and memorable way. I doubt that Sasuly integrated his information
about IG Farben to a broader set of cultural myths about America, for
example, as Pynchon does in tracing the Slothrop family's corporate
interests back to providing the medium for shit, money, and the word.

-Doug