Chasing ... Cutting

[Paul Mackin]

On Tue, 29 Aug 2000, Yessenia Perez wrote:


> TRP gives the history and
> he, significantly it is through Weissmann, links the history
> of the Herero genocide with the  history after the failure
> of the German revolution, with both world wars and the nazi
> holocaust. But the holocaust is not the focus of this
> linking. It is not the holocaust that is alluded to in the
> opening scene of GR. No, that would fuck up the novel,
> sorry. TRP situates the novel, and jbor has been right on on
> this, and see Charles Berger's essay "Merrill and Pynchon
> Our Apocalyptic Scribes", "just BEFORE the beginning of the
> atomic age proper." The fall of the crystal palace is not an
> allusion to the start of the holocaust but to the end of the
> second industrial revolution. 

I can see that you are taking the commonsense view that the novel
is situated at--and starts at--the end of WWII at the beginning of atomic
age--not, say, in 1938 when the Jewish persecution was getting underway,
and not at the height of the Vietnam War, and of course I agree. But
are you leading up to some additional nonliteral truth here as
well? Curious.

			P.