GRGR Kristallnacht

[Paul Mackin]

On Mon, 12 Jul 1999 RICHARD_WILSON at udlp.com wrote:
> 
> of course, imho, only a fool would deny that TRP alludes to the european
> jewish-slav-gyspy-physically challenged-socially deviant-politically opposed-etc
> holocaust of wwii in more than one way & on more than one level. but why he's
> doing this still eludes me. 

I doubt if P would have necessarily wanted to expressly avoid the topic.
But, say, because of  some quirk of 1973 literary fashion (davemarc's
post) he hadn't wanted to give the Holocaust even minimal treatment.
Wouldn't the topic have been an exceedingly hard thing to avoid given
its  promenence in the public mind? Think of the task of blotting out The
Holocaust. Just for starters, he couldn't have used the Hansel and
Gretel tale because of the oven or the Crystal Palace allusion because of
its correspondence with Kristalnacht. Even the use of trains as a form
of transportation would have had to be carefully monitored. In other
words many good images would have had to be discarded. (remember I am
being hypothetical) Hope this doesn't sound too disrespectful or flippant.
To me it seems obvious.

(I know I've said all this before) 

			P.