GRGR(5) Katje and the Nazis

[Jason Tanz]

From: calbert at pop.tiac.net AT Internet on 07/09/99 11:30 AM

To:   Michael Perez <studiovheissu at yahoo.com> AT Internet at ccmail
cc:   pynchon-l at waste.org AT Internet at ccmail (bcc: Jason Tanz/Magazines/Hearst)
Subject:  Re: GRGR(5) Katje and the Nazis





Michael Perez:

> I don't see the "crystal palace" reference as being to the
> Kristallnacht ("The Night of Broken Glass," 11/9/38, when Nazi mobs > smashed
Jewish owned shop windows and synagogues in retaliation for the > assassination
of a German diplomat in Paris by a young Jewish man).  It > is a reference to
that icon of Victorian ingenuity, The Crystal Palace, > that was mostly
destroyed by a 1936.  .. As for the "judgment from which there
is no
> appeal," I always took this to mean death, I see no overt Holocaust >
reference here.  The same with the "dark hotel," this could be almost >
anything.  The "Ss" is coincidental, IMHO, and does not refer to the >
Schutsstaffeln, it is merely descriptive.

calbert:

I'll go along with that.


Me:

I'm coming out of the shadows for one second to suggest that what we're arguing
about here is an appropriate lens through which to read the book and that the
whole point of Pynchonalia is that there is no "right" answer (I realize this
sentence contradicts itself; what can you do?). I think we'd all agree that
Pynchon at least raises the spectre of the Holocaust. The degree to which we
interpret it as central to the book is going to depend on what we, as readers,
bring to it. Saying that Pynchon inteded that the book be read as a Holocaust
parable (or, alternately, that the Holocaust imagery is incidental) misses the
point, imho. It's like Pointsman's search for a definitive Pavlovian cause for
Slothrop's erections. It's like paranoia. It's projecting some "message" or
"moral" or "system" onto something that is by its very nature ambiguous.



Back to the shadows again....



Jason