VV(1) Rachel's MG

[Doug Millison]

Cute,  how Pynchon anthropomorphizes her car:  "familiarizing it"; 
"gee and haw" (a muleskinner's commands? used for horses, too, I 
think); "its arrogant butt."

d  o  u  g    m  i  l  l  i  s  o  n  <http://www.online-journalist.com>


Dave, thanks for digging up that Pynchon letter re the Herero -- that 
Pynchon gave Seed permission to publish it is interesting. Pynchon 
seems to have been had a relatively clear idea about what he was 
trying to say with the Herero in V. and in GR, and how the earlier 
German genocide relates to the later Nazi genocide. "When I wrote V. 
I was thinking of the 1904 campaign as a sort of dress rehearsal for 
what later happened to the Jews in the 30's and 40's." Not that we 
should give any special credence to what the author has to say about 
his own novel, of course -- oh no, anything but that! Until he's gone 
of course, as Rich Romeo noted some time ago, when scholars begin to 
quote his letters, journals, conversations reported by friends, & 
etc. --  maybe even some of those same scholars who have such 
orthodox views now about rejecting the author in favor of the text 
and critical theory.