Chasing ... Cutting

[Paul Mackin]

I shouldn't have been so dismissive of Dave M's post. It was just that
there didn't seem to me to be anything in his speculations that was
definite enough to agree or disagree with. I know this is his
style--believe he calls it thinking out loud. Anyway it's fine with me 
and I apologize. My stuff's probably maddening too I know.


			P.


On Wed, 30 Aug 2000, Dave Monroe wrote:

> I was responding specifically to your comment that  you "believe that the
 American
> destination of the final rocket and Vietnam and also the Holocaust could
 only be more
> faintly heard overtones farther up in the series," which was a response,
 I presume, to my
> comment that "There is much in Gravity's Rainbow that is anachronistic,
 if one"--and I'm
> correcting my own typo here, left a vestigial "has" in my post--"limits
 contexts to the
> presumably immediate, historical ones of the narrative at any given point.
  And it DOES
> rather end during the Vietnam War, Cold War, Postcolonialism, Civil Rights,
 Gay
> Liberation, et al.   It certainly was written, published at the height of
 such tensions,
> certainly can, perhaps should, be positioned there."
> 
> My point is that, first off, insisting on Gravity's Rainbow as a World War
 II novel
> ignores that significant (and what ISN'T significant in GR?
  for starters ...) portions
> of the narrative alone are concerned with events well before or after
 the War.
> Obviously, as you of course recognize.  But we differ perhaps in emphasis.
  But I'd
> further propose that, just as one can productively, ineterestingly read
 works written
> further back in history, literary or otherwise, with regard to their
 historical
> contexts--noting, say, the repeated theme of problems of succession in
 Shakespeare, right
> up to, well, whaddaya know, Henry VIII--one might well read Gravity's
 Rainbow
> productively, interestingly in its historical contexts.
> 
> Which it obviously is a product of.  It certainly couldn't have been
 published in the
> form it was outside of its immediate contexts (say, the Zhlubb
 Administration, the legal
> troubles of which it might even refer to [again, what is the manuscript,
 publishing
> history of GR?]).  And there is certainly a history of similarly ...
 absurdist? unusual,
> at any rate, works concerning WWII (Catch-22, Slaughterhouse-Five,
 How I Won the War,
> Kelly's Heroes), wars in general (Dr. Strangelove, or ...,
  M*A*S*H) which seems to
> culminate in Gravity's Rainbow.
> 
> And just as it would be difficult to write a novel set in WWII-to-Occupation Germany
> concerning the V-2 and NOT somehow touch on the Holocaust, it would be perhaps impossible
> to write, publish a novel about war, ballistics, et al. during the years ca. 1963-73, in
> "these" (the internet IS Amer'can, no?) United States of America and NOT, "intentionally"
> or otherwise, somehow have the Cold War, the arms race, the Vietnam War (and I'd risk
> perhaps civil, "inner city" or otherwise--and this is perhaps being signalled by
> Pynchon's obvious lift from that Fanon book--unrest as well).
> 
> Someone was kind enough to send along a paper by Charles Hollander proposing a reading of
> The Crying of Lot 49 in relation to the Kennedy Assasination, US covert operations, et
> al., and, between that paper, my interest in those satirical-to-cynical Vietnam-era WWII
> movies (on the other hand, a friend screened a 35mm copy of  Is Paris Burning? for me
> last night, which struck me as interestingly nationalistic [ a Franco-American
> production, in the can albeit not in tomato sauce] given it was shot in 1966--a great
> film, nonetheless), that very line Otto pointed out ("Dear Mom.  I put a couple of people
> in hell today" (V537)), maybe all those boats cruising up and down rivers, and, well,
> that New Historicist thang ...
> 
> Well, something to look into, is all.  One of many, many possible, promising, even, lines
> of inquiry.  Have not much pursued it myself, but am about to look seriously into GR's
> uses of Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks (that explosion, that zone, that prayer, for
> starters.  Wars of decolonization.  Race).  Again, I'm sort of working all this stuff out
> loud, which is why I subscribed in the first place.  That answer your question?
> 
> Paul Mackin wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 30 Aug 2000, Dave Monroe wrote:
> >
> > This isn't suppose to have any point to it, is it?
> >
> >                         P.
>