Catch-22...say _what_?

[Dave Monroe]

... just catching up on the past few days here, agreed in re: Joseph Heller,
Catch-22 (and, by the way, the recently mentioned here The Good Soldier Svejk
by Jaroslav Hasek seems frequently compared to Catch-22, so there's another
incentive).  Is there any writer, any text "we" (speaking, I think, in at
least an average, perhaps even a majority, sense here) take seriously that
somehow exploits and/or makes light of the Holocaust?  Which is one of the
reasons I can't help but believe Gravity's Rainbow is taking it as significant
as well, as settings, characters, themes, plot elements, word choices, even,
can't help but allude to the Holocaust, once that Germany-in-WWI context is
established, well, connections are, or, at least, to any responsible, informed
reader, should be.  But I think that, as with Gravity's Rainbow, Catch-22 (as
I recall) is somehwat circumsepct about the Holocaust as well, and I'd venture
that, in both cases, that circumspection is, on the one hand, because of the
historical context of either novel's publication, i.e., the Cold and/or
Vietnam Wars, which both novels cannot help but alluding to, being connected
with, as well, and, on the other, because of the problematics of representing
the Holocaust, esp. in works such as GR and C-22, where the direct
juxtaposition of the comic to farcical to scatological to pornographic
elements which abound in either novel with such grave and gruesome events
might well serve to exploit and make light of them.  Anybody familiar with
that suppressed Jerry Lewis movie about the clown leading children to the gas
chmabers?  But "Pynchon purity," here?  All Pynchon, all day, all night?
Hardly ... not complaining, mind you, but this list does seem easily
distracted (I certainly am, at any rate), rife with distractions ...

kevin at limits.org wrote:

> [Jbor writes:]
> I really can't see [Pynchon] 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.
> [end quote]
>
> Do you really think Catch-22 is all about "cheap laughs" or Heller's
> profit?  And, if so, on what basis?
>
> If you want to go off-list and maintain the Pynchon Purity, that's fine
> with me...I post this to the whole list in order to maintain the honor of
> Joseph Heller before the whole world.  ;)
>
> Kevin Troy