Chasing ... Cutting

[Otto Sell]

----- Original Message -----
From: jbor <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: Dave Monroe <monroe at mpm.edu>
Cc: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, August 28, 2000 5:24 AM
Subject: Re: Chasing ... Cutting
> 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".
>

jbor,
I suppose we have a different understanding of "overtly Holocaust-denial"  -
for me the Nolte- and neo-Nazi thing comes to mind when you say it.
The perspective of the narrator (and Weissmann's since we have crept in his
mind on p. 98-99, so you really must read it turned upside down) is early
1945 when the information of the death-camps wasn't very widespread, and to
the rocket-story it fits better that Weissmann is commanding a
rocket-battery instead being KZ-commander and Gottfried a Jewish boy . . .
And wasn't it withhold by the Allies with the argument that no one would
believe it, that this would weaken and not strenghten the war efforts?
We as readers of this post-war novel have all this information. It is
obvious that through the following remembrances to Südwest and "the great
Herero-Rising" Pynchon is not at all denying the German Holocaust of
Auschwitz and Treblinka. There are lot of things he leaves to the reader to
fill in. He's not pointing directly but indirectly. Supposing that nobody
who really denies the historical facts will ever read GR it's absolutely
legitimate to do so as an author. Additionally I think it's extremely
important to tell that there have been earlier, call it "minor" German
genocides in history. First the Hereros have hardly been recognized as
victims over here and it's only fair to bring them to attention. But
furthermore, all we have been told is that the British, the French, the
Dutch and mostly the Belgians have been "bad colonists" but the Germans
always have been good ones. No von-Trotha in our history books.
Nolte had tried to explain the Holocaust with "Asian" models - Hitler
inspired by Stalin or so - but Pynchon makes clear that there was no need
for a stalinistic pattern - we've got all we needed in our own history.

> 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.
>

"Tonight he feels the potency of every word: words are only an eye-twitch
away from the things they stand for." (100)

Weissmann as Hitler: agnostic but superstitious, note the repeated use of
the word "Destiny" on p. 98, one of Hitler's favorites:
"Die Vorsehung hat mich auserwählt." - "I was elected by providence." For me
the words "destiny" and "providence" are not that far apart from each other
considering the implicit and necessary "control" they both express.

Pointing to individual guilt is always done by those who tend to deny the
Holocaust or keep up the fairytale of the "good Wehrmacht" versus "bad SS"
when it comes to speak of German war crimes. People may have different
reasons for taking part but it's "They," the system that makes Weissmann's
little perverted game possible. Above and behind all the personal
responsibilities, even Hitler's, there were other reasons, motivations and
attempts to control: money, economy, parties, churches, "Preussische
Landjunker" and so on. But this is no amelioration of the personal guilt
someone who has "really" taken part bears, no matter how he presents his
"fairytale" to his grandchildren.

The margin in my *Die Enden der Parabel* has a note from 1982:  "Auschwitz
?" - I see the first mentioning of the Holocaust on p. 3-4 in Pirate's
dream, dreamily disguised as London-evacuation. The images that come up are
of deported Jews. Remember Pirate's special talent explained in Episode Two.
This is what millions of Jews encountered at "die Rampe," at the real "oven"
at Auschwitz, where the final selection, the final judgment without appeal
took place:

"(...) places whose *names he has never heard* . . . (...)" (3. italics by
TRP)
"(...) they are under the final arch: brakes grab and spring terribly. It is
a judgment from which there is no appeal.
The caravan has halted. It is the end of the line. All the evacuees are
ordered out. They move slowly, but without resistance. Those marshaling them
wear cockades the color of lead, and do not speak. It is some vast, very old
and dark hotel, an iron extension of the track and switchery by which they
have come here. (...) . . .  the evacuees are taken in lots, by elevator--a
moving wood scaffold open on all sides (...)." (4)

The double-meaning of *scaffold" should alarm every reader at once.

Otto