Chasing ... Cutting

[jbor]

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>From: Dave Monroe <monroe at mpm.edu>
>

> But this IS her situation with Weissmann/Blicero, no?
>  "their preserving routine,
> their shelter, against what outside"--as opposed to the "formal, rationalized
> version" thereof presumably inside ...--"none of them can bear--the War, the
> absolute rule of chance, their own pitiable contingency here in its midst...."

Perhaps we should quote the whole paragraph:

      How seriously is she playing? In a conquered country, one's own
    occupied country, it's better, she believes, to enter into some formal,
    rationalized version of what, outside, proceeds without form or
    decent limit day and night, the summary executions, the roustings,
    beatings, subterfuge, paranoia, shame . . . though it is never
    discussed among them openly, it would seen Katje, Gottfried and
    Captain Blicero have agreed that this Northern and ancient form;
    one they all know and are comfortable with -- the strayed children,
    the wood-wife in the edible house, the captivity, the fattening,
    the Oven -- shall be their preserving routine, their shelter, against
    what outside none of them can bear -- the War, the absolute rule of
    chance, their own pitiable contingency here, in its midst. . . . (96)

She is "playing" the Hansel and Gretel game, they all "have agreed" -- and
Blicero is last in that listing note -- have *chosen* to submit to the
"formal, rationalized" terms of this particular narrative/mythic structure.
But the dramatic irony is that the obvious symbolism of "the Oven" (i.e. The
Holocaust) goes unacknowledged throughout this whole section, is something
which is perhaps even consciously or subconsciously denied by these
characters.

The Kinderofen allegory continues and the narrative actively *resists* the
obvious Holocaust allusion again, even more explicitly, a couple of pages
later as Blicero ponders "his Destiny":

      So his Destiny is the Oven: while the strayed children, who never
    knew, who change nothing but uniforms and cards of identity, will
    survive and prosper long beyond his gases and cinders, his chimney
    departure. (98-99)

It is Blicero's metaphoric fate here circumscribed, not that of the 6
million or more Jewish victims to whom it is so obviously applicable. This
is overtly Holocaust-denial; it is Pynchon foregrounding Blicero's (and,
earlier, Katje's) putative knowledge of and complicity in acts of Jewish
genocide. But along with the denial is the psychological explanation of it
-- they have sought "shelter", both physical and psychic -- from "the War
[...] their own pitiable contingency here, in its midst".

These earlier sections are all about the various characters' attempts to
wrest some type of Control, on however small or large a scale, away from
"the absolute rule of chance" which is the War, and from Life and
Civilisation and Mortality in respect of which "the War" operates as a
synechdoche/metonym in the novel. This, to me, seems an attempt by Pynchon
to ameliorate the extent of the "culpability" we might otherwise,
automatically and stereotypically, appoint to such individuals.

> Think it a gesture of good will that I did NOT make the obvious  wisecrack in
> responding to your previous post (i.e., Prostitute, go ...).

You sort of have, paraleptically I guess, but I don't get it so it doesn't
matter. I admit that our respective lines between assertion and "nastiness",
intent and reception, might have become blurred, but have nonetheless always
been quite willing to engage in civil discussion with you or anyone else --
even millison -- provided that they also demonstrate themselves to be
similarly inclined.

best