Stalin's Murders and the West

[Dave Monroe]

.. well, I don't know about "scholarship," but I have been doing an awful lotta
reading these days, as you all ARE rather keeping me on my toes (and perhaps, as has
no doubt been noticed, more than a little on edge).  Hell, found books I'd forgotten
about, inc. Dennis Piskeiwicz, The Nazi Rocketeers, and Peter Wegener, The
Peenemunde Wind Tunnels: A Memoir.  And, actually, I probably do lean rather more
towards the "lit-critical," but, on the other hand, I don't tend to make all too
sharp distinctions between the historical, teh political, the critical, the
theoretical, whatever.  Use whatever's at hand, whatever it takes, that bricolage
thing.  But speaking of frustration, perhaps you understand now what I mean about
trying to keep up with each and every little thing here (for starters) ...

But, well, don't know if one can speak of the "responsibility" of "the novel," of
fiction, to address the Holocaust, certainly not in each and every instance, but
there are instances where I'd say there was no small responsibility, say, when
you're writing a novel set in Nazi Germany and its aftermath ... I'd also venture
that Gravity's Rainbow does not necessarily always do so, but that it does make the
attempt, and in no small part through poetic, aesthetic, literary, whatever means.
That paraleipsis, that praeteratio (?!), for example, that way of sort of speaking
about something at times by circumspection, by a certain conspicuous absence ...

jporter wrote:

> > From: Dave Monroe
>
> >..... I would like somehow to
> > get back to Pynchon here, think perhaps this Cold war line, not to mention the
> > "empowering of the marginalized" might be the way to do it ...
>
> Or any other path that suits your fancy is fine with me. To respond to your
> sense of frustration snipped from above, as I confessed earlier on, there is
> no way I can match your scholarship here (which I again commend, especially
> because it tends toward the political and sociological, and away from the
> lit critical). I'm way too busy. But so are many others, who are none the
> less interested in Pynchon and these issues.
>
> Which raises a question. How responsible is the novel or fiction for
> bringing issues like The Holocaust and its whole context to light in our
> culture? Obviously there are plusses and minuses, and it certainly does
> result in a ?healthy? debate of the issues, but GR complexifies them, as
> well, which leaves room for doubt, or even the danger of getting caught up
> in "The Art" of the novel, or sidetracked by purely litcrary concerns. It
> can be talismanic at times.
>
> jody