Chasing ... Cutting

[jbor]

----------
monroe
>

> "The most effective evocations of the Holocaust seem to proceed either by
> invocation, the glancing reference to an existing bank of ideas, images and
> sentiments ('Auschwitz'), or, perhaps, more effectively, by indirection."
>
> --Inga Clendinnen, Reading the Holocaust (New York: Cambridge UP, 1999), p.
165
>
snip

>From an interview with Inga Clendinnen I posted at the time of the book's
release:

"History counts, says Clendinnen. It is a form of analysis and writing
that belongs to the moral realm, as fiction and poetry do. The
difference, however, is that while fiction and poetry are about people
like us, history is about us, people who existed, 'whose blood is real
and whose deaths are final and cannot be cancelled by turning back a
page'."

Clendinnen: "If we are to learn about ourselves, we cannot say it was
something abstract like 'those who did it were evil'. This means
nothing. It lets us off the hook .... "

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9909&msg=407&sort=date