WWII in GR

[muchasmasgracias at cs.com]

Jbor writes:

>>millison offers three page nos as proof of "a reasonable emphasis on the place of the Nazi Holocaust in this novel". That's three over 758, give or take. Which is 0.003958 of the novel. [
] I think that it is this *absence* of the Holocaust from the text of *GR* which is incredibly significant, this deliberate choice Pynchon made to keep it "off-stage" in a novel which, for all of its 758 pages, *is* very much about (and "about")the historical WWII, its precedents and aftermath. I don't believe it is a sop to neo-Nazism or Holocaust denial to suggest this, and I think it is something worth pursuing, in a calm, reasoned dialogue, if that is at all possible, in a forum such as this.<<


It's totally worth pursuing!  One thing in particular that sticks in my mind is one of those three passages (p428?) when Pokler sees the slaves and the narrator remarks (as I bullshit with my copy of GR on the other side of America) that this suffering is what has been going on behind the scenes while Pokler toiled away.  With the Holocaust mentioned so little this line weighs in pretty heavily, and it certainly reinforces the idea that the lack of text-presence is loaded with a lot of innuendo.  (What's been going on behind the scenes while we've been following Tyrone & co.?)  Alongside this I think it's worth mentioning the only point in the novel I can remember where Hitler's name comes up.  Those two guys chatting at the White Visitation (I think), one of them badmouthing astrology, the other responding that Hitler reads horoscopes, and the first retorting, "Hitler is an inspired man."  Stuff like that jumps right off the page at you.

But saying it jumps right off the page at you is about as far as I'd go to interpret the "significance" of this narrative strategy, at least until I was sure others were still in on the dialogue (which I prefer to monologues).  For the sake of conversation I do recognize that it's useful to point to the significance of things like this, but I also think there's this prevailing tendency to squeeze the life out of a "text" by trying to put your finger right on it, by "exhausting it's possibilities", as if that were possible.  There are loads of things which I think are important to get about GR, but I don't like the notion of isolating the things which are "somehow fundamental to a deep understanding of this novel."  Reminds me of laying down the exact edicts which are fundamental to good living, etching them in stones, getting real pedantic about them, etc.  When you think you've put your finger on it, then you're really in trouble.


Re: that Crownshaw article that keeps getting quoted
  One line in particular that seemed dodgy to me was:

"Where Pynchon dramatizes how the Holocaust is recalled only to be subsumed in an official History which rationalizes or mytifies the evolution of the American military-industrial complex, the allegorical recognition of trauma allows a disruption to take place."

And I'm thinking, O no! the allegorical recognition has caused a disruption to take place!  I haven't read the article (although by now maybe all the quotes I've seen add up to the whole piece), but to me this line in particular seems like a bunch of baratone-caliber intellectual flatulence, and with some serious sustain to boot.  (This is a phenomenon which is not, in my opinion, all that rare in Pynchon Notes.)  It's bad enough when many of the leading lights in the lit-crit world do this (What's with English professors who can't construct good sentences?), but it's even harder to digest the stuff that comes from the middle, or back, of the pack.  This dude Crownshaw seems to be griping about an "official History" which "rationalizes or mystifies" the bad shit that went down, but he still can't avoid bouncing from vagary to vagary, as if he isn't up to a bit of rationalization himself.  By contrast, wouldn't you (any old you) say that Pynchon's non-fiction is nice and clear !
and reader-friendly?


Doug:
>>I'm no literary theorist, and I recognize how Crownshaw uses a fine-tipped brush where I have only a sledgehammer, but I have been glad to see in his article what appears to be recognition of the importance these direct Holocaust references carry in GR, and, perhaps, confirmation of my suspicion that they are somehow fundamental to a deep understanding of this novel.<<


It's always nice to hear somebody who agrees with us.  As for the fine-tipped brush (are journalists allowed such figurative liberties?), I'd say it's more like an airbrush, but that could just be a matter of opinion...

Hopin y'all will excuse the rhetorical flourishes...