Chicago's Biograph theater closed

[Dave Monroe]

... and you know, I was just by The Biograph last week (although I was
going to a couple of other theaters instead.  That Brazillian Orfeu, by
the way, is no great shakes.  If it weren't a foreign--and thus to
American audiences, an "art"--film, it'd merely be written off as a
cognate to similar--and better--Hollywood Lit'rachure updates feat.
freshfaced star/let/s and pop music like Clueless or 10 Things I Hate
about You).   But a few comments on recent proceedings ...

David Seed (The Fictiona Labyrinths of Thomas Pynchon), by the way,
mentions Alain Robbe-Grillet in re: Fausto Maijstral's narration in V.
The geometry, for starters, cf., I'd say, that veranda in A R-G's
Jealousy (a.k.a. Venetian Blinds).  But maybe I'll wait 'til we hit that
section in V. (only two more days ...).  By the way, since Claude Simon
(and maybe CS's The Georgics or might be better examples of "le" nouveau
roman to bring up in re: Pynchon?  That war angle ...) got his Nobel
Prize, wondering if Robbe-Grillet will ever get one?

Reminds me, Bei Dao's in town tonight, however, and, having regretted
not putting money on Kenzaburo Oe and Gunter Grass in recent years (on
the other hand, Fo, Szymborska, Saramago, whod've thunk it?), wondering,
where can I get a line ...?  But Nobel Laureate 2001, despite what you
may have heard, the ACTUAL new century, new millenium, time for a
Statement on the part of the Committee.  BD might be one--China's kinda
sorta due, no?  There IS a politics to the Nobel Prize ...--but there's
always TRP, Jr. ...

But back to Th' List ... well, I imagine my own take on "The Holocaust
in Gravity's Rainbow," while not nearly so well so as Doug's, is
nonetheless known well enough here.   Comes up for me the moment I read
Wernher von Braun's name after that first epigraph.  Can't help but.
Germany, WWII, the V-2, Peenemunde, Dora, well, just too much common
knowledge out there for the novel NOT to evoke the Holocaust as well.
Which is does, both directly and allusively.  And much of what might
well be of Some Significance in GR, in Pynchon's texts in general, is
evoked, invoked, whatever, allusively.  It certainly does not hurt to do
a little outside reading.  And GR, as, in particular, Ulysses before it,
seems to assume an awful lot of extracurricular preparation.  Certainly,
much went into it ...

I've never quite understood why it's so contentious to bring up here how
the Holocaust is manifested in, alluded to, commented on, even, in GR.
As I've said before, I find Doug and Otto's observations about how even
those first couple of pages might well be read as a description of the
arrival of a train at a concentration camp to be no small revelation
about what the novel is up to (Terrance's recent comments about
spectatorship, theatricality in GR might yet prove similarly productive
for me, but just haven't had time like I had this past summer, and now,
starting in on V., well ...).

Pynchon's comments in "Is it O.K. to be a Luddite?" only confirm that
examining 'The Holocaust in Gravity's Rainbow" is a topic worth
pursuing.  Hardly--HARDLY--the ONLY topic worth pursuing, but ... but,
despite a certain characterization of Doug, and, perhaps, me, here,
neither of us has insisted that it is THE topic to consider.  It's
apparently just the one that caught our attention here, is all.   Not
sure why that in and of itself whould be a problem here (and I would
point out that the ad hominem nastiness has indeed come from ALL
concerned, so ...).  Plenty of stuff posted by plenty of people here I'm
sure plenty of other people aren't particularly interested in, plenty of
other people disagree with, so ...

And I can only imagine that much of this will STILL be at issue in
discussing V., given not only the presence of Weissmann (and Mondaugen),
but also passing comments about 60,000 slaughtered Herero being 1% of
the 6,000,000 Jews (for starters) slaughtered in The Holocaust, and,
again, general issues of genocide, German involvement therein,
exacerbating factors like religion, colonialism, technology,
romanticism, what have you.  But I've got some reading to do, so ...
though I'll post a few references I never quite got around to for
anybody who might be able to use them.

Here's one right now: Margaret Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe
(New York: Oxford UP, 1921).  This seems to have taken a
nigh-unto-Luciferian fall in terms of credibility (and it might have
been reprinted as The God of the Witches ca. 1970 by OUP, but ALL the
copies are missing from the local library system), but a mention of it
in in re: witches, werewolves, Germanic folklore, et al., in  an essay
by Carlo Ginzburg ("Germanic Mythology and Nazism: Thoughts on an Old
Book by Georges Dumezil," in Clues, Myths and Historical Method
[Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1992]) made me wonder ...

Herbert Marcuse also apparently had a critique of Norman O. Brown's
aphoristic Love's Body published as an afterword to some edition of
Brown's book somewhere, but it sure ain't in the currently available
here U of Cal P ed.   Any help?   In the meantime, I see the library has
a copy of NOB's Hermes in for me, just in time to be well after the nick
of time, but ... but, hey, any recommended reading in re: V.?  Did just
read Seed's comments thereon, see also W.T. Lhamon, Jr.'s Deliberate
Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950's
(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), the chapter on
(pace Seed?) Wittgenstein, modernism and V. ...