pynchon-l-digest V2 #1443

[Doug Millison]

The passage on pages 432-433 is narrated, straightforwardly, from 
Pokler's point of view.  The narrator relates how Pokler  finally 
comes to grips with what he's suspected all along, that his work on 
the rocket has necessitated the cruel use of these human beings, some 
of whom he has seen marching in to work from Dora; the same narrator 
reported this back on p. 428:  "he could *see* -- the starved bodies, 
the eyes of the foreign prisoners being marched to work at four in 
the morning in the freezing cold and darkness" but he "helped with 
his own blindness" and somehow managed not to connect the dots 
between those slaves and his own job.   At page 433  the narrator 
says that Pokler realizes that "the faces are ones he knows after 
all" (433).  No sign in this passage that Pokler is giving up some 
suburban dream of family life (it sounds instead that he's 
recognizing people he saw marching in back at p. 428), but realizing 
that Leni and Ilse have met a similar fate could account for part of 
his gut-wrenching reaction; at any rate, the text doesn't address 
that here -- the narrator doesn't show us a scene where Pokler 
recongizes Leni or Ilse among these dead and dying --  although 
Pokler's concern for his wife and daughter is prominent in this long 
episode at the novel's center.

When Pokler confronts this scene of horror on pages 432-433, the 
narrator reports that Pokler is finally able to give up his denial 
that these crimes were taking place as a necessary part of the 
project to which he contributed as an engineer. "While he lived, and 
drew marks on paper [that's what Pynchon is doing, too, of course, in 
his Manhattan Beach apartment in the '60s while the aerospace 
industry down the road cranks out ICBMs], this invisible kingdom had 
kept on, in the darkness outside. . . all this time....Pokler 
vomited. He cried some."  It would seem safe to assume he's also 
giving up the romantic notions of space travel that the Nazis 
co-opted in order to get him to work so hard and diligently on the 
rocket, which the same narrator reported back at the beginning of 
this long episode, although the narrator doesn't touch specifically 
on that renunciation in this particular passage.

"If she lived, the ring would be good for a few meals, or a blanket, 
or a night indoors, or a ride home. . . ." -- that's of a piece with 
the rest,  narrated from Pokler's point of view, too. While the 
narrator chooses not to illuminate the perspective of this "random 
woman,"  the narrator does report what Pokler thinks:  Pokler, the 
narrator tells us,  imagines that the woman might be able to do with 
the ring if she survives this hellhole that he, Pokler now realizes, 
helped to create.

rj said, "For example, the gold wedding ring Pokler gives to the 
"random woman" after the Dora prisoners have been liberated is, from 
Pokler's perspective, a final renunciation of his dream of regaining 
his ideal family setup with Leni and Ilse. But from the emaciated 
woman's perspective it is just a meal ticket, something which can be 
traded for food, shelter or transport (433). Pynchon gives both 
perspectives in the text but leaves it to the reader to join the 
dots, make the moral connections."

I read this passage differently. Pynchon shows us quite clearly 
Pokler's visceral response to the enormity of the crime he now 
realizes he's been a part of; Pynchon suggests with equal clarity a 
moral framework within which Pokler can discern what he's actually 
done, and how he might respond. (I've explained above how the 
narrator specifically avoids giving us this random woman's point of 
view, her perspective, and instead stays within Pokler's perspective.)

The narrator connects the dots between Pokler's feeble attempts at 
denial to his wretched realization of the truth: "Impotence, 
mirror-rotation of sorrow, works him terribly as runaway 
heartbeating, and with hardly any chances left him for good rage, or 
for turning. . ."

This "turning" -- yet another instance of this image, which recurs 
throughout GR --  in this context sounds very much like the turning 
in the Christian notion of repentence,  turning away from sin and 
towards God: "Repentence did not mean primarily remorse or regret for 
sin, but a radical turning to God, that is, a radical centering in 
God. . . .  repent ... meant to turn or return" (Marcus Borg, _Jesus: 
A New Vision_ ). Which is what a Christian can do when he realizes 
he's sinned and needs to turn his back on the old ways which have 
separated him from God, when he's put something besides God 
(something like a V-2 rocket, perhaps, which Pynchon elsewhere in GR 
calls a Holy Text, if not God Himself) at the center of his life. Why 
would Pynchon lift a trope from the Christian scheme of confession, 
forgiveness, redemption -- a framework fundamental to GR from start 
to finish -- to characterize Pokler's epiphany (an epiphany that, 
arguably, takes the form of self-condemnation) here in Dora, if not 
to indicate a register of moral judgement, to make such a judgement 
possible, and to indicate the terms it might take?

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.

I think I can understand how a critic at the extreme end of the 
post-modern spectrum, who wants to promulgate as absolute truth the 
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, plus a shelf-full of theoretical 
works, to marshal the necessary arguments and somehow soften, or 
ignore, the stentorian tones in which Pynchon and his narrators so 
often drive the moral lessons home (that direct link between sex and 
colonialism, for example, that thunders back on  page 317). But, I 
don't see how Pokler's story, or in particular the passage that rj 
quotes from page 433, supports such a reading. But if that's the way 
you want to read GR, have at it. Everybody gets the Pynchon he wants.

Frodeaux, thanks for that LA Times story and for calling our 
attention to yet another V., "California-born insurance magnate 
Cornelius V. Starr."

Heartfelt, post-ironic, and most millisonically, I remain

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