pynchon-l-digest V2 #1448

[MalignD at aol.com]

<< Malign revised (less charitably, "lied about") my previous post:
<<You said nothing about fiction.>>

Is there something, finally, wrong with you?  Do you read what your write?  
 
Says Millison:

<<Pynchon treats it [the Holocaust] with nuance, in a way that shatters 
pre-conceived notions about how and why the Holocaust happened.>>

Then:  <<I'm not aware that Levi or Wiesel have written novels in which ..." 
etc.

Then:  <<Safe to say, I guess, since you provide no answer to the contrary, 
that Levi and Wiesel didn't fictionalize this historical reality in novels?>>

"Pynchon shattered pre-conceived notions" is what you said.  (He did nothing 
of the sort.)  The statement is unqualified; it says nothing about "in the 
form of a novel."  Whether Primo Levi or Elie Wiesel or anyone else wrote in 
the form of a novel or an essay (or in the form of linked limericks, for that 
matter) is irrelevant.  One says something original or one doesn't.  
Pynchon's use of the facts in GR are powerful, certainly; but he said nothing 
remotely original. 

<<Pynchon has brought to the attention of millions of readers (especially 
college students who weren't around when The Sovereign State of ITT, "was a 
popular best-seller in the sixties") who in GR learn, many,  perhaps most,  
for the first time, ugly truths about the way international corporations 
played both sides in WWII and thus profited from the Holocaust. Considering 
the way that popular media continue to obscure the role of multinational 
corporations in WWII, and how the popular media specifically in the U.S. fail 
to shed much light on the way that U.S. corporations profited from Holocaust 
slave labor, I will continue to argue that "shatters pre-conceived notions" 
is a fair characterization of GR's impact on its readers with regard to the 
role of international corporations (many of them based in or with significant 
operations in the U.S.) in the Holocaust.>>

Your argument is then, that Pynchon "shatters pre-conceived notions" for 
those who read him and who are otherwise illiterate of other primary or 
secondary sources (among them, those that Pynchon himself poached) but have a 
good-enough knowledge of WWII to have pre-conceived notions.  Well, hell yes: 
 I can agree to that.

Millsion adds:

<<If it's "shatters pre-conceived notions" that you don't like, I'll take the 
liberty of revising my own previous post ...>>

It's precisely that that I don't like.  That and calling me a liar.  So do, 
please, take the liberty of revising your post.