Crownshaw's PN article

[jbor]

I agree with Paul. There is something very tenuous about readings such as
Crownshaw's. I don't think the relevant comparison is of *GR* and a work
like *Dune*, but of, say, *Catch-22* and *GR*. I think there is an enormous
difference between Heller's (Mennippean?) satire in the former and Pynchon's
historical novel (which incorporates elements of satire but is more than
that as well). For someone as acutely aware of audience, purpose and context
(that holy trinity of "deconstructionist" pedagogy) as Pynchon obviously is
-- and not just his own audience(s), purposes(s) and context(s), but the
audience, purpose and context of the mass-published novel in late
capitalist/US society -- I really can't see him using the suffering and
horror of the Holocaust (or of the actual fighting and killing being done by
soldiers in WWII) to earn profit, laughs or kudos for himself. Others, like
Heller, have done this, of course, and that's where Pynchon's "allegory" of
the tourists (which always enacts a reader-persona in my reading of Pynchon)
being led to the Dora camp by some sideshow shyster takes on its reflexive
tenor and is not at all what Crownshaw attempts to turn it into. It's also
why I don't think Pynchon'd be using the Argentine sub. episode for cheap
laughs.

And, in fact, I see it as being something extremely shameful that there are
those who would attempt ride the Holocaust pony to lit crit and
discussion-list credibility.

best


----------
>From: Paul Mackin <pmackin at clark.net>
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: Crownshaw's PN article
>Date: Tue, Aug 8, 2000, 9:59 PM
>

> I read the article. I had tried to put myself in the correct frame of mind
> for left perspective litcrit and think I got the basic jist of the
> thing although I'm no adept in such matters. You have to realize that the
> short paper was a mere speculation upon a speculation that just maybe
> (possibly) there might be some way to interpret certain passages in  GR
> as having an allegorical meaning (literal meanings would be useless) that
> might serve in some kind of a rehistoricization of the
> Holocaust--in other words give it a demonstrable link to the American
> Military Industrial Complex. Of course I may have missed the whole point
> but sincerely doubt it.
snip