GRGR Finale: Intolerance and "The Nazis"

[jbor]

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It is necessary to resort to the sort of stereotypes which Pynchon both
subverts and travesties in the novel (eg Disney's "Japs" 680) to reinforce
the simplistic anti-*German* reading of the novel which is disguised behind
the Nazi bogey-word. (The "inner Nazi" indeed! What a load of claptrap.) But
the most telling remark is this one:

> That's how we distinguish savages, after all
> -- they act out the impulses that the rest of us manage to keep in
> check.

I think Pynchon is very interested in analysing the sort of supremacist
mentality which believes it can "distinguish savages" (terribly loaded and
discriminatory term). It is the sort of intolerance of and failure or
unwillingness to comprehend alterity that Pynchon characterises in Frans van
der Groov with the dodoes, or the Rhenish Missionaries with the Hereros --
and which is latent in Marvy's racism also. Pynchon also shows why these
types are really concerned to make such discriminations (usually
economically-driven, or as self-justification), and what happens next when
they do. Once the missionary-imperialists have distinguished someone as a
"savage" -- by their deviance in behaviour and/or attitude from moral,
religious and social "norms" which have been posited and established by the
dominant (or "Elect") group -- they either try to assimilate these "savages"
by conversion, or enslave them (as forced labour, or commercial as a
colonial "market"), or, if it suits their purposes, wipe them out
completely.

There is, of course, much more subtlety in Pynchon's representation of the
German volk in the 1930s who *elected* Hitler to power, for the most part
supported his foreign aspirations, and, at the very least, were willing to
turn a blind eye to his domestic doings: Leni's anti-Semitism which develops
into an erotic fascination once she becomes the target of persecution
herself because of her political persuasion; the rocket scientists'
"Wandervogel idiocy", their naive scientific eagerness which, though perhaps
ignorantly (Frans falls asleep during the *Nibelungen* and misses Attila the
Hun roaring in to wipe out the Burgundians 159) but still ultimately
willingly, helped along the German military conquest of Europe and assault
on Britain; the rationalisations and equivocations of a
Collaborator/Resistance operative such as Katje, or a Nazi acolyte such as
Enzian. There are, of course, the historical *facts* of appeasement and
complacency amongst the Allies which are as much of a backdrop to the novel
as the Holocaust is: along with the long-term political neutrality of the
Americans and their economic complicity in munitions-making and war
technologies for the European War. I think that rather than condemning "the
Nazis and everybody else" Pynchon demonstrates that such
historically-revisionist discriminations are meaningless, self-gratifying,
and ultimately, the root cause of violence and destruction themselves.

best