The epigrams in *GR*

[jbor]

The four epigrams all seem to share a certain sense of ... denial, shall we
say? Feigned innocence? The opening one from von Braun which, as far as I'm
aware, hasn't been sourced (but may be from one of those Disney pieces
possibly; I don't agree that Pynchon has invented it), seems like his
response to an elided question along the lines of ...

"So, Wernher, how do you feel about all the death and such that your V-2 and
ABMA programs caused, not to mention that which it rode on the back of,
y'know, the Holocaust'n'all?"

Self-justification, in other words. Cooper's words to Fay Wray fall into a
similar category. They are a sort of bending of the truth to coerce the
young starlet to take the role, a lure to her allure.

Likewise, Dorothy's remark to Toto must rank as one of the greatest
understatements of the 20th Century.

Nixon's question has always seemed to me to convey an affectation of
surprise or shock, as though he had been woken up at three in the morning by
one of his lackeys with the words: "Hey, Tricky, wake up! Some guys name of
Bernstein and Woodward're saying they've found some tapes ... " (It strikes
me that there has been a string of somewhat doltish US presidents since the
early 70s btw, or perhaps its just the media images suggesting this which
linger: but I can imagine them all responding as Nixon does in *GR* if ever
questioned without having the benefit of a script from which to reply. Looks
like another one on the way with Bush Jr, but this is perhaps beside the
point.) I don't know if there is an actual context for Nixon's "What?" or if
it is a wider allusion to his general demeanour. But there is a sort of
imperious denial in the question, a protestation of innocence mixed with
contemptuous dismissal.

In each case there is an attempt to deny the obvious, and so much of *GR*
centres on the various characters' denials, conscious or otherwise, of the
obvious circumstances of their lives, the war, their involvement in it et
al: Slothrop of his conditioning; Pirate of the uses to which his "talent"
has been put; Rog of the transience of Jess's "love"; Pointy of his ulterior
motive ("the Prize"); Katje of her complicity in Nazi crimes; Blicero of the
horror and cruelty of his utopian vision; Tchitchy of the Kirghiz Light etc
etc. Virtually all of the narrative context of the novel is set in the
historical moment of WWII, and made up of its characters' perceptions
therein, and up until those Nuremberg Trials there just wasn't much mention
made of the Holocaust I'm afraid. Of course, the context of the writer and
reader being 1973 and beyond, the banal usage of words like "holocaust" and
"Hitler" triggers *our* preconceptions and the "knowledge" we have acquired
and the judgements we have made, in hindsight, but I think in structuring
his narratives in this way Pynchon is also asking the reader to question
some of the commonly-held stereotypes about guilt and complicity.

Anyway.

Above and beyond these denials there are ironic truths deep beneath the
surface of each of the epigrams which Pynchon also draws our attention to.
Dorothy isn't in Kansas any more: she's in her dream which is a dream of
not-Kansas, and it is her healthy skepticism and innocence which will see
her through. Kismet. Sort of like Slothrop. Sort of like the good-hearted
(skeptical) reader. Crushing all those wicked old witches riding in on their
brooms and ponies. Etc ...

And Fay Wray does veritably smoulder on screen, and Pynchon makes much of
the truth of her (and our) romance with the black "scapeape" throughout the
text.

And Nixon, even in his "black managerial Volkswagen", didn't quite know what
was going on, didn't have the media and the public at his fingertips as he
(or Those who had groomed him) might have thought he did.

And Wernher, well ... So much of the text in *GR* is drawing our attention
to exactly the sort of thing that good old Wernher sez about life after
death. But the irony (I think) is that perhaps Wernher didn't quite believe
what he was saying, that he was making up excuses for himself and his
actions in *this* life and so actually missed the comfort that such a
"truth" could have afforded.

Perhaps.

best