GRGR(5) Katje and the Nazis

[CLAY JONATHAN D]

On the whole I agree with what Doug is saying here. I think Pynchon 
is alluding to the Holocaust deliberately indirectly not least 
because it's so difficult to allude to directly and do the horrors of 
it full justice. How can there be art after Auschwitz? Or more to the 
point here perhaps, how can there be art *about* Auschwitz? In this I 
think Pynchon is doing something very similar to the poetry of Paul 
Celan - a lot of it's "about" the Holocaust while little or none of 
it references it directly.

> Of course we can all read whatever we want to read, or not, in GR. Still, I
> continue to marvel at the resistance that comes up each time I make the
> case that one of the things TRP writes about in GR is the Holocaust. What
> is it about this subject that is so difficult to admit in the reading of
> this novel?  It's not as if I've said this is the only thing TRP is doing
> in the book. Such denial (of the Holocaust holding an important, even
> central position in GR) also requires that one turn aside from many (yes,
> many) references and allusions in GR -- in earlier posts I detailed quite a
> series of such in the opening sequence of the novel (a location many
> novelists use for material they consider particularly important), and the
> undeniable direct references that tie the Holocaust directly and
> unmistakably to the technology that serves as a central organizing
> structure for the novel, the A4 rocket. I could have also brought into my
> post of yesterday the major role that the Oven plays in this episode
> featuring Katje, Blicero, Gottfried -- is it really necessary to point out
> what an obvious reference this Oven is to Nazi atrocities, in a novel which
> takes as its setting WWII and which specifically focuses on the Nazis?
> 
> Admitting that TRP also alludes to other instances of genocide (Herero the
> huge example in GR) and perhaps by extension is referring to all instances,
> what's the difficulty in admitting the very obvious and specific references
> to the Nazi Holocaust?  Is there some academic trend or fashion that I'm
> bucking in making such an assertion? Is it too damaging to late 20th
> century ironic sensibilities to admit that TRP, epitome of postmodern
> novelists as a certain group of critics and theorists have crowned him,
> might indulge a non-ironic condemnation of something as serious -- and as
> overwhelmingly important in the 20th century -- as the Nazi genocide of the
> Jews? Maybe a younger generation of GR readers hasn't had the documentary
> film images of the Holocaust burned into their brains the way an older
> generation did, just after WWII when the Nazis were brought to trial, and
> again on U.S. TV throughout the 50s and 60s for the Baby Boomers? I know
> that a certain TRP-bashing foreign-based "journalist" has often tried to
> make the case for TRP as anti-Semite, but I don't get the sense that's what
> drives this reluctance. But, whatever the reasons, I just don't get it.
> 
> d o u g  m i l l i s o n  http://www.online-journalist.com
> 

"Bewildering spring, and by the Auvezere
Poppies and day's eyes in the green email
Rose over us"      
              "Near Perigord", Ezra Pound

Jon Clay - [cj833 at greenwich.ac.uk]