NP Native Americans-related

[Paul Mackin]

Yes and the theme 'exterminate the brutes' is a prominent one in
Pynchon. In the American case it's always a question of how much weight to
give to mere expediency--two groups vying over the same territory so one
must  go--and how much of the extermination depends on the compulsion to
destroy what we cannot understand and therefore fear in a rather
irrational way. In Pynchon it's the latter that seems to get the
stress. Also in P there is always the option of converting the
heathen. Problem is, you never know when you've been successful. The dodos
can't even speak so there's a conversion problem right there. And the
Kirgiz people (like the American Indians  mostly) didn't have a written
language. Who knows what mysteries are hidden in those strange
syllablizations that are never written and needn't therefore make literal,
linear, Western sense. The third alternative is to bite the Jungian bullet
and accept one's own shadow as Tchtcherine actually does when he fails to
kill his black brother other. Of course this required the intervention of
Geli the teen age witch.


			P.




 On Sun, 10 Sep 2000, Keith Obye wrote:

> I don't know if it has been mentioned on list before, but there is a
> tremendous book by David Stannard (history)  called _American Holocaust_
> on the hemisphere-wide genocide which occured post-columbus.  The Baum
> quotes are included.
> 
> Cheers, Keith Obye
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Thomas Eckhardt" <uzs7lz at uni-bonn.de>
> To: "Doug Millison" <millison at online-journalist.com>
> Cc: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2000 6:33 AM
> Subject: Re: NP Native Americans-related
> 
> 
> > Which brings to my mind: Frank L. Baum, the author of "The Wizard of Oz",
> > worked as a newspaper editor in Aberdeen, South Dakota, during the 1890s.
> In
> > two of his editorials he called for the complete extermination of the
> Sioux
> > people by the US:
> >
> > http://www.dickshovel.com/TwistedFootnote.html
> >
> >
>