Somewhat NP Argentinians bound for Germany

[jbor]

----------
>From: Michel Ryckx <michel.ryckx at freebel.net>
>To: jbor <jbor at bigpond.com>, "'pynchon-l at waste.org'" <pynchon-l at waste.org>,
Doug Millison <millison at online-journalist.com>
>Subject: Re: Somewhat NP Argentinians bound for Germany
>Date: Mon, Aug 7, 2000, 5:55 AM
>

> jbor: "(...) The excerpt from it you cited does not reflect this meticulous
> documentation at all. It is rife with exaggeration, unsupported
narrativisation,
> and citation of testimony which is dubious at the very least. Perhaps you
could
> quote something a little more reliable from it next time."
>
> Just semantics you're using here.

Not really. I'd offered the relevant corroborating information in a prior
post:

> "Tens of thousands" of Nazis is a pretty hyperbolic claim
> on the scant evidence ("several confirmed reports", one spy, one
> "informant", and unspecified and uncorroborated US secret intelligence
> "documents") provided in the passage cited. Hardly historical empiricism, is
> it.

>
> You go on: "Pokler's story is not a story about the Jewish genocide at all.
> Where are the depictions of this slave labour in the text? Where are the
Jewish
> characters, Jewish plotlines, Jewish perspectives, as compared, say, to
> Argentine, Japanese, Herero, Dutch, let alone German, Russian, British,
> American? Where is there an examination of Judaism, or anti-Semitism, as there
> is of Puritanism, Gnosticism, colonialism. Using the Holocaust to "tie
together
> so many threads in the novel" is something a reader might do. But, as you
> continually prove, it is necessary to seek outside the text to do so, or to
turn
> the text into something other than what it is by a process of fanciful
> reinterpretation."
>
> Anyone reading this novel, set during WW2 in Germany (jbor should say: no,
it's
> 'a' war, and it is set in a Zone)

Er, no, that's not my opinion at all. I've heard of one-sided conversations
but this is ridiculous.

> and not seeing the Holocaust in it, is eh,
> '...narrow-minded'.  Is your point of view: there is only text, we cannot know
> the the author's motivation, and the reader must set aside anything he knows

No, the reader must reassess what she or he thinks she or he knows, takes
for granted, believes to be true etc etc. Your stereotype is way wide of the
mark.
>
> ""Ranks"?! Pynchon is concerned with 'ranking' genocides?! That's news to me.
> What is the measure of these "terms of importance"? Amount of ink devoted to
> specific descriptions? Number of characters? Plot threads? Body count? This is
> baloney."
>
> May I remind of you of the 60.000 dead Herero's, described as: not much, but
> still pretty good, being 1 % of 6 million.
> Where is a passage when you need it desperately,
>

In *V.*, on p 245
>