WWII in GR

[Dave Monroe]

... hm, "Flame Warrior," like I'm cruising around the Australian desert in a
beat-up old muscle car, packing a flamethrower and frying mohawked punks in
stripped-down, spiked-up dunebuggies.  And then there's the camp element.  Very
good.  But I'm not quite sure why any disagreement with you amounts to "flaming"
(whatever that might mean), whether or not it's addressed to you.  Takes two to
play ping-pong, jbor, and I just keep returning the ball, is all.   But
Shakespeare and Faulkner had a good line in sound and/or fury, so ...

Not sure that anyone could "demonstrate" that any "allusion" in any text,
Pynchonian or otherwise, "serves to defuse" (and these things do tend to be
uxbs, don't they?  Half-buried at best, waiting to be stumbled upon, detonated
...) any other such "allusion," much less any "actual significance" (the
"actuality" of which being determined how?), esp. as I tend to admit as many
readings, as many "allusions," as much "significance," as possible, but I think
you're actually claiming the "actual significance" of that passage (on
V415/B484, "'The new planet Pluto'"?) is as "a depiction of the rise of National
Socialism in Germany," with which I have no problem.

The Third Reich was indeed a "grim phoenix" risen from the ashes of Verseilles,
which indeed "create[d] its own holocaust" (ashes to ashes ... question is, did
it rise again?), a "deliberate resurrection," "staged" (by Joseph Goebbels,
Albert Speer, Leni Riefenstal, et al., not to mention that first stage of
Wernher von Braun's), "Under control," at least at first, under that
fuhrerprinzip, that Fuhrer, not to mention the Gestapo, the SD, certainly with
"No grace, no interventions by God" (why did the skies not darken?).  AND then
there's that PLUTO, those plutocracies, that pipeline, those cartels, those
petrochemicals (petrol, plastics, Imipolex G, even) ...

... but I've no problem considering, admitting, proposing, even, various and
even opposing readings.  I have no problem reading them, at any rate.  What I do
have a problem with is the foreclosure of such readings, for which I esp. see no
particular reason here, in a space seemingly established for thinking out loud,
or, at any rate, on screen.  Again (and again and again ...), no one here is
proposing the Holocaust as necessarily the ruling sign of Gravity's Rainbow.
Some of us are merely noting signs of it within, whilst you so furiously, if not
quite soundly, deny their significance.

 In the meantime, I have no problem picking up a little something about
Argentinian epic and/or anarchism along the way, but I don't imagine (well,
sometimes I do, but ...) that you're claiming that Gravity's Rainbow is a book
primarily-to-exclusively about South American anarchism any more than I'm
claiming that it is a novel about North European National Socialism (which is
how much ...?).  And you sure can rant about all that stuff you mention, just as
I could complain about onlist discussions being surreptitiously slipped out of
sight and into my own private mailbox, but ...

... but, well, I'd kinda like to be able to finish the novel as well, it's been
a very long time for me, so ... but you still haven't taken me up on my inquiry,
i.e., what's it all about, jbor?  Do let us know ...


jbor wrote:

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> monroe: