WWII in GR

[Doug Millison]

Dave Monroe makes an interesting point that dovetails nicely with one 
of the ways that I  read GR (which is, after all, a novel that can be 
read many different ways, rich as it is).

Pynchon has chosen an historical setting for GR, he starts with a 
setting that we know and creates his fiction largely within those 
parameters. This is not Dune, a world invented from scratch.

"Where are the Nazis?" rj asks. "Where are the Jews?"

It's true that most of the Nazi Holocaust remains off-stage in GR -- 
most of WWII remains off-stage, after all. Even in a novel as big as 
GR, Pynchon can't include all of the events, characters, settings, 
etc., that comprise the actual, historical, real-world WWII; he'd 
soon run into the problem of the map growing as large as the 
territory. But,  Pynchon includes enough of the WWII of history in 
the novel, and bases much of his fictionalized WWII story on 
documented WWII events, to create the vivid impression that the novel 
does in fact take place in WWII.  (Part of the charm of the novel is, 
as more than one person has noted in our Pynchon-L discussion over 
the years, the way Pynchon then inserts wildly fantastic, 
surrealistic elements into a fiction that in many ways would appear 
to adhere to the norms of historical fiction.)

Most of the evil Nazis remain off-stage, but not all --  Pokler works 
with some, a quote from von Braun begins the novel, we have Blicero 
the pedophile. When Slothrop visits the Mittelwerke, at page 296, 
Pynchon mentions the Dora prisoners and their "spiritual rampage" 
after their mistreatment, torture, murder at the hands of the Nazis. 
I've previously mentioned the ghost girl who helps Slothrop feed into 
the flames the doll with the hair of a Jewess. At page 428, Pynchon 
marches in the Dora slaves, "the starved bodies" & etc. , then again, 
at p. 432, exposes "the naked corpses" (in a description that could 
be a shot-by-shot description of the documentary films that were 
widely disseminated in the '50s and '60s).  A handfull of direct 
references, but enough to know, without going outside the novel at 
all, that Pynchon is dealing with the WWII of history.

Dave wonders how this whole thread started. I'd date it to the 
beginning of GRGR, when I suggested that the "Ss" in "cast-iron 
pulleys whose spokes are shaped like Ss"  might be read as an 
allusion to the Nazi SS, and that it might be possible to read the 
opening of GR as an allusion to the death trains on their way to the 
concentration camps --  rj ridiculed that suggestion and went on to 
talk about the absence of the Holocaust from GR. As RJ has so 
consistently tried to minimize this aspect of the novel if not erase 
it from consideration altogether, I've made it a point to lift this 
material up for consideration.

Is rj suggesting that Pynchon sets GR in a  WWII where Nazis are not 
killing 6 million Jews and other undesireables? That would make 
Pynchon the Holocaust denier, wouldn't it?

In fact, such a suggestion (if rj is suggesting it -- maybe he's not, 
I'm just trying to respond to what he's written in this thread) is 
absurd.

I don't argue that the Holocaust is the only thing going on in GR -- 
that's the straw man that rj (and Mackin) keep putting up and 
knocking down.  But I do think the Holocaust holds a central place in 
GR -- physcially, in the middle of the book, plus the way it pulls 
together so many characters and plot lines in the novel.

No Nazi Holocaust = no Dora slaves = no V2 rockets = no GR. Along 
that spine Pynchon hangs an amazingly multifaceted fiction, and 
without it.....?




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