GRGR(6) - section 8 (#2)

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

>
>
> I offered another couple of more prosaic possibilities a
> week or two
> ago:
> >
> > 126.19 "seventh Christmas of the War ... " Starting from
> 1938? From when
> > Roger was co-opted into war service, perhaps? Or is it
> suddenly 1945?
>
> If part of Pynchon's theme is that "the War" is ongoing
> throughout human
> history (as we've conjectured here before), then it isn't
> illogical for
> Rog to refer to it in terms of the length of time he has
> been at its
> disposal (i.e. employed in its service). "The War" is his
> mother (39.37)
> in that it feeds and clothes him as well, and pays the
> bills.

Right! We have been talking about the ongoing war for some
time now.
During our discussion of Dogs I wrote:
I will discuss the dogs, but also History, Story Telling
(how to begin
telling the tragic history of the ongoing war) and Readers
of Fiction.

In response to Kai's question concerning my reference to
Heidegger I wrote:
The "war," the ongoing war. Consider Germany if you like and
its ongoing war, as
Grass does--or History and America, as Pynchon does in his
fiction. This is what I
have been talking about. It is Pynchon's theme. The mail is
not working too well,
so perhaps you have not read my post on Pynchon, Doblin,
Grass, and the ongoing
"war. "   In any event, even if we consider only WWII, as
Grass has asked, “What do
we tell our children?” Moreover, how do we tell them? With
stories, I think. Fifty
odd years is not a long time to absorb such a calamity for
the West and indeed for
the world.  It seems to me that the current controversies
surrounding Paul De Man,
and, more importantly here, Martin Heidegger reflect some
sort of psychic economy
of reason in face of horrific evil, great losses and human
suffering.  We might
consider, the pedagogical and academic implications of
intellectuals attempting to
comprehend (as if it were some form of insanity or evil
Enigma), how such men of
learning, who demonstrate such a profound and subtle
appreciation for the art and
philosophy of the West, could have countenanced, indeed be
complicit with, an evil
that seems to erode any possible explanation, justification,
or contextualization.
And again, it seems to me that way to tell our children, the
only way, is not
intellectual evasion, justification, technical, social or
psychological
explanation, but to tell stories—as Pynchon does, as
Cherrycoke does, “to keep the
children amus’d.” M&D.6




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