WWII in GR

[Dave Monroe]

Don't recall anyone here even attempting to connect each and ev'ry element of Mr.
Pynchon's Very Big Book Indeed to The Holocaust, or anything else, for that matter.
Indeed, I recall recently taking up a passage seemingly of yr own choosing (why
"grim"?  why "literal"?  why "deliberate," for that matter ...), and making some not
unreasonable suggestions as to how the Hlocaust might be being evoked therein (and
not even starting with the word, "holocaust").  Also recall in general a certain
someone displaying no small anxiety, though, each and ev'ry time anyone even
attempted to suggest certain such connections, though ... but I think Doug and I, at
least (at LEAST), have been pointing out some not all too unobvious possible
allusions to the Holocaust, to the Third Reich, to National Socialsim, and so forth
(starting with but hardly limited to actual straightforward references thereto),
largely as amtter of opening a discussion thereof, rather than leaping right to the
One True Reading thereof, whilst you seem mighty anxious to foreclose, forestall,
bypass, wahtever, said discussion.  Which is why I perservere on it, because I think
its tenable, warranted, demanded, perhaps, even, by Th' Text, not to mention by a
certain ... critical responsiblity or somesuch.  (U-boat making the return trip
along that Germany/Argentina route?  That double-integral just perchance also
resembling, not only that layout at Nordhausen, but the initials of that
Schutstaffel as well?  Such "coincidences" do NOT catch one's--your, at any
rate--critical eye?  Hm ... at any rate, at first approach, "point" is, well, beside
the "point," jus' mapping the territory first, afore we lay out the freeway system
...).  "Cheapen"?  "Shallow"?  How so?  Indeed, I've at least suggested that
Gravity's Rainbow's often tangential trajectory to the Holocaust is not only not
atypical of literary approaches to the holocaust, but exhibits no small
responsibility thereto ... but Gravity's Rainbow was published, Pynchon was indeed
writing, in a "liberal"--in the classical sense, encompassing, in "our" (me 'n'
Pynchon's, at any rate) American context, both captal-L "Liberal" and "Republican,"
though perhaps not "socialist" and certainly not "Marxist" or "anarchist" or
"libertarian" (small- or capital-L) and so forth and so on--"democratic"--such as it
was, is, e'er shall be (?), and not just captal-D "Democratic" (which it certainly
wasn't by the time GR hot the shelves)--"context"--a context which one imagines
WOULD have to be, indeed, contextual, if a text would "critique" it--with which Mr.
Pynchon and his Very Big Book do indeed seem to have a complicated relationship, as
they do with just about everything, "it"--albeit not perhaps yr own particular,
peculiar "it," whatever "it" might be--having been indeed suggested ... Pynchon not
necessarily voting for Gore this election?  Quelle surprise!  Quelle horreur!
Though perhaps not for Bush nor Buchanan, or, for that matter, Nader, either, maybe
not even voting at all, who knows?  But, hey, go ahead and make yr point, sock "it"
to us ...

jbor wrote:

> what I have taken issue with are attempts to connect every scene, image, character
> and/or word in the novel to the Holocaust

> And why are you so sure that Pynchon is writing in a "liberal ... democratic
> context"? What if it were suggested that his novel is in fact a *critique* of such
> a "context"?