WWII and its context(s) in GR

[Dave Monroe]

... ah, was wondering where ev'ryone went ... by the way, I notice that Michael
Neufeld (The Rocket and the Reich) edited, along with one Michael Berenbaum, a
collection of essays called The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies Have
Attempted It? which, if it's not out already, is supposed to be out this month
from St. Martins ... anyway, well, will be out of everyone's hair for at LEAST a
day or so, having had free run of the list for the evening (albeit playing to
what seems to have been an empty auditorium), but, well, either you get
complaints about playing it too close to the historical record, or you aren't
playing close enough.  In Pynchon's case, which is, of course, if not all the
case there is here, certainly, the case first and foremost at hand, well, I
don't think it's be to hard to find examples and counterexamples either way, in
Gravity's Rainbow or otherwise (I mean, really, take a stroll through the
eighteenth century of Mason & Dixon), and, certainly, Gravity's Rainbow slips
and slides all over the place, from, off the top of my head, musings on, at
least, Puritan New England, the extinction of the dodo, et al., to the presumed
"present" (at the time of writing, publication, at least ca.1973) day of The
Orpheus Theater at the end.  With speculation on either temporal direction from
just about any point within.  And I might yet have something to say about
Slothrop's apparent confusion at Nuremberg as well, but I ask the court fpr time
to allow me to prepare my case, already for all practical purposes outta here
for the day, so ... but I further think it's not unimportant to look at the fact
that Pynchon was writing, published GR in his immediate contexts as well:
references to the space program, RMN et al.  I don't believe it is simply a
question of any sort of historical rupture, either, of, say, cause and effect
writ large, causes beget causes, effects beget effects, causes are effects of
other causes, effects are causes of other effects, and so forth and so on, ad
infinitum, ad nauseum, amen, kinda sorta tending to undermine said "Great
Men"--or even "Great Event," maybe even "Great Balls of Fire"--theories as well,
kinda sorta in accord with the deconstruction of that Elect/preterite binary
that seems to be going on in Pynchon, no?  Still don't know how this in any way
negates the detection of certain elements in Gravity's Rainbow, however,
allusions (at LEAST) to the Holocaust, and do note the pivotal positioning of
Hiroshima near the end of Chapter 3 ... there ARE at least certain Events at
which things become manifest, although they are undoutedly set in motion by
many, many other events ... as was, say, that space race, that arms race, that
Cold War ... but perhaps cut to teh chase, ask, what is Gravity's Rainbow then
"about"?  Wise guy answer: about 800 pages long ... Really Wise Guy answer:
about 800 pages too long ... Wise Man say: not nearly long enough?  Let me know
...

jbor wrote:

> As far as I can see, the motivations for the various Allied Declarations of
> War on Nazi Germany were largely territorial and/or retaliatory in each
> instance, and had very little if anything at all to do with the Nazi
> persecution of the Jews, which must have been reported to some extent, was
> at least strongly rumoured, and might even be claimed as common knowledge in
> political circles throughout the mid to late 1930s. The "who knew about
> what?" and "why were they at war?" questions of complicity and guilt apply
> to the Allies as much as to the Germans depicted in the novel. It's all very
> well to react retrospectively to the setting, context et. al. but Pynchon's
> narrative vision is (generally) located *within* the historical moment, and
> different perceptions and priorities certainly applied prior to the
> Nuremberg Trials (and what does Slothrop ponder about that particular
> pageant at 681.30 -- "No one he has listened to is clear about who's trying
> whom for what ... ") Further, I think it's important not to overlook the
> fact that Pynchon in *GR* is interested in the immediate (and more distant)
> pre-war contexts as well: references to the Kristallnacht, Novi Pozar,
> Ramsay MacDonald, FDR and other British and US politicians of the 30s,
> Versailles, Passchaendale et. al. I don't believe that it is simply a
> question of 1945 and then what came after; and I don't think Pynchon at all
> subscribes to the historical rupture theory (cf. the ironic positing of 1904
> as a one of history's "nodes, critical points" 451-2), any more than he
> would subscribe to (any variations upon) Jakob Burkhardt's Great Men theory.
>
> best