WWII in GR

[Dave Monroe]

You know, I don't think anyone here is actually arguing that the Holocaust is
the be all and end all of Gravity's Rainbow (as if anything could be, but
...).  Indeed, as with any text, it is first and foremost of its context, in
Pynchon's case, that arc, that trajectory, that parabola, roughly coincident
with the rise of the missile and/or space race, of that "Rocket State," leading
up to its publication amidst the final hurrah of the Apollo (vs. the Dionysus?)
program, not to mention the Vietnam War, the Nixon administration (hm ...
TCOL49's "Sick Dick and the Volkswagens," GR's Richard M. Zhlubb's "managerial
Volkswagen," from whence did those pregnant rollerskates come from again?  Hm
...), "60s" pop and/or drug culture, and so forth.  But remember from whence,
in what context, and by whom, that Rocket bridging past and present, WWII and
the Cold and/or Vietnam Wars, was launched ....  Nor do I think that anyone is
arguing that elements of the Holocaust are, indeed, to be found in and/or
implied by, the text.  And nobody's (yet) complaining about Pynchon's depiction
of the evnts and elements of WWII, The Holocaust, Hiroshima, what have you
(although there is much to be said about teh problems and problematics thereof
in GR, no doubt).   The question, rather, seems to be, just what is there, just
what is implied, by what, and how, and how much import should we accord it ...
me, well, I'm just happy to get a little mileage out of a little reading I've
been doing--Pynchon, WWII, the Holocaust, the Third Reich, technology--but I
don't think we have to make a pie chart out of this, only so much for this
topic, only so much for that, plenty to go around for all, we can have our cake
and eat it, too (well, duh, it's our cake, but ...), but what I do not
understand is why anyone would so virulently deny anyone their own particular
piece o' Pynchon here ...

jill wrote:

> I concede that the rocket building concentration camp/camps don't get
> described or portrayed with proper deference to the suffering of the
> workers but read on. So many flashbacks to earlier times fill the book
> however, and at these early flashback periods in history what was accepted
> was not "the Holocaust" as we now refer to it. What would have passed to
> describe the events going on at that time in the flashback times would be
> sadism, brutality, moral decay, hoplessness and submission. And somehow
> Pynchon decides to do it with "we're all going crazy" kind of shuffle off
> to buffalo humor. I get the feeling that at this time the Nazis, many of
> whom in power knew of the camps, had grown so calloused and inattentive to
> human needs, ones like Franz, Blicero etc. that they had become good at
> ignoring their state of culpability, that not reacting to the horror of the
> camps became just a way to get through the day, easier not to care, we are
> going to loose anyway, grind down emotions and focus on science damn it.
> Look the other way if it bothers you kind of sickness. I think these
> relationships exist today albeit on a tiny grain of sand in comparison. And
> it is that underpinning of how relationships that we swim around in all day
> long, whether it is slavery and captalism -- are not pretty things to swim
> around in. They are all around us but absent--depending on how do we choose
> to look at these things--or our buy-in to the surface appearance of things.
> How did the US South get so many pretty big stone walls and large old
> houses? Although many were torn or burned down during the US Civil War a
> condition of atonement didn't include tearing them all down. We let them
> stay there and tour them. How do corporations make so many nice pretty
> sneakers? We don't add 5 bucks on the price in a kindness charity towards
> fixing Malaysias economic problems and cause their economy to be the same
> standard as ours, and we run in our sneakers. etc. I am suggesting that the
> discussion has been tempted to argue whether or not it is "good" or "bad"
> that slaves and death and starvation are not more frequently mentioned in
> the novel. I don't have the answer, but it is a good  discussion and I am
> glad it is happening. Makin and jbor please keep building and knocking
> down! And I also am thinking that the Crownshaw article was confusing since
> (i did not read it) the excerpts hinge on the vocabulary words like
> "subsumed" and "transmission of trauma" what does that mean? Well that's my
> 2 cents worth.
>
> Jill