pynchon-l-digest V2 #1443

[jbor]

What's more, the sudden relative calmness ("post-ironic" indeed!) of his 
demeanour -- his "turning"! -- doesn't obscure the fact that this episode
with Pokler and the "random woman" at Dora (which was a *labour* camp:
housing "foreign prisoners", "175s", and other *political* opponents, like
Leni and Ilse, and *unlike* the Jewish concentration camps at Auschwitz or
Buchenwald) was the trump card in his 'the Holocaust is central to *GR*'
rants which went on for months (before and during GRGR), and by virtue of
which he calumniated a swag of p-listers as Holocaust-deniers and neo-Nazis.
Historical accuracy isn't his strong suit it would seem. And, admitting when
you're wrong obviously isn't regarded as one of the "Christian" virtues
either. Let alone apologising for offence caused.

best

----------
>From: MalignD at aol.com
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: pynchon-l-digest V2 #1443
>Date: Wed, Sep 27, 2000, 6:20 AM
>

>  << I think I can understand how a critic at the extreme end of the
> post-modern assertion there are no moral absolutes, might want to read
> Pynchon in such a way as to erase Pynchon's moralizing; I note that it takes
> a lot of fancy footwork to do so ...>>
>
> There's some footwork to be noted in Millison's argument, not terribly fancy.
>  Having suggested (not very convincingly) that turning  "... in this context
> sounds very much like the turning in the Christian notion of repentence,
> turning away from sin and towards God ..." Millison then says  "Why would
> Pynchon lift a trope from the Christian scheme of confession, forgiveness,
> redemption ..." as though what "sounds very much like" to him has become an
> established given.  This is Millison stomping clumsily on the P-list's toes.
>
> Millison's interpretation is at best a stretch, ignoring the more likely
> possibility (particularly in war time) that "turning" means shifting
> allegiance to the other side or, more simply, turning away--in Pokler's case,
> simply reverting to previous behavior.
>
> One can as easily use the same passage, pulling words one wishes to load, to
> make the opposite --that is, "no God/no morality"--argument.  Is not marriage
> a Christian rite?  What is Pokler's position vis-a-vis God to blaspheme this
> rite by putting his ring onto the finger of a "random" women (or, from yet
> another point of view, to betroth Death)?  Is not randomness in the universe
> the quintessential atheistic position?
>
> Millison writes:  "It may be worth noting that Pynchon here does appear to
> affirm the possibility for such a turning:  his narrator tells us Pokler has
> 'hardly any chances', slim but not none."
>
> This would be assuming, as already noted, that Pynchon meant "turning" as
> Millison assumes he meant it, an assumption alive in Millison's brain if not
> elsewhere.  In any event, ""slim but none," is not exactly a Christian trope;
> rather a comment on odds, chances, probabilities, such as occur in a random
> and unordered series of events.  Or universe.
>
> Nabokov said of symbols, don't confuse them with the smudges of your own
> fingerprints.  By all means, have the Pynchon you want, but you would do well
> not to confuse him with the narrow-minded boob staring back at you from your
> bathroom mirror.