Libel (was Re: just for fun Re: pynchon-l-digest V2 #1452

[jbor]

Not even one of the critics millison cites suggests that "the Holocaust can
be said to lie at the centre of GR".

Yes, the labour camp inmates at Dora were used as slave labour at the
Mittelwerke, and this is depicted in the novel. (Scott Simmond errs in
denoting Dora as an "extermination camp". The fact that Dora was "different"
to "Auschwitz and Buchenwald" is stated in the text of GR on p. 666.)

Greta Erdmann's murder of children is not part of "the Holocaust". Her
performances for Axis troops are not part of "the Holocaust". Blicero's
relationship with Enzian is not part of "the Holocaust". Hiroshima, the
decimation of the Hereros, and the extermination of the dodoes (which are
depicted in GR), and the Jewish genocide, Stalinist purges or massacres of
Nth Amerindians (which are not depicted) are not part of "the Holocaust".

The idea that "plentiful references" to "the Holocaust" exist in GR would
need to be substantiated with examples thereof. I'm still waiting.

I agree with the critics (and "many readers") that WW II -- the setting or
"era" -- was when "the Holocaust" occurred. However, it was an aspect of the
era which, however widely known or suspected, was unacknowledged, or
*denied*, at the time, by civilians and soldiery on *both* sides (eg.
Pirate, Katje, Pokler, Blicero etc). It was not what *anybody* was fighting
over, after all. It is this which the *absence* of direct references to the
Holocaust in the novel foregrounds. Imo, that is. Furthermore, a
representation of this disregard of and indifference to the fate of the
arrested Jews and other persecuted peoples during the war *was* something of
a revelation for the time GR was published. The way Greta's murder of the
children had been suppressed, and Slothrop's reaction to Morituri's
narration of it, is another exemplification of the sorts of *denial* which
went on *at the time*.

Pynchon's aesthetic representation of the War -- his narrative -- is, almost
without exception, set within the historical moment, filtered through
various characters' points of view. millison ignores the subtlety of
Pynchon's literary method in order to ride roughshod over history and
confirm shallow revisionist stereotypes of why the various powers entered
into the European conflict, and of the cultural and historical legacies
which motivated same.

I strongly disagree with millison's moralising interpretations of Pynchon's
texts. However, I don't at all agree that discussion of or awareness-raising
about the Holocaust should be suppressed. Silence condones.

millison has accused me of characterising Pynchon as a Holocaust-denier, or
of being a Holocaust-denier myself. This is untrue -- libellous, and deeply
offensive. He has neither retracted this nor apologised. He is a coward and
a creep.