Eddins on Blicero

[jbor]

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>From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
>

> And it is
> Weissmann who asks Mondaugen if he has heard of Hitler &
> Co.,

I don't think that "d'Annunzio" and "Italia Irredentia" or "Kautsky's
Independents" fit so neatly into your construction of "Hitler & co." What
they do comprise, along with Hitler and NSDAP, are a group of significant
political opponents of the Treaty, the League, and Weimar Germany, who were
rumbling around the traps in 1922. These things (Versailles, the League, the
siege at Fiume, the Weimar Rep. and the Inflation) are also foregrounded in
the chapter.

> Hitler, "as if 'Hitler' were an avant-garde play." And
> of course we have the facts, the history the narrator
> connects, the 1% of six million.

We discussed that particular passage in some detail a couple of weeks back.
I suspect that it is the "superficial" and "hardly profound" connection
Pynchon makes reference to in the 1969 letter to Thomas Hirsch, and that
from further research into "comparative religion" he actually realised "the
thing" goes "much deeper", and this is what he would eventually plumb in
_GR_. I agree with you that it's an external "narrator" here, btw:

http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0103&msg=495&sort=author

http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0103&msg=504&sort=author

I think that some of us have been discussing the actual historical
circumstances of 1922: the administration of the province by the Sth African
Union (i.e. British/Dutch), the march and rebellion of the Orange Boers, the
quashing of the revolt by the British planes, and so on. These are all
actualities which are represented in the text. We've also been discussing
Weissmann's status at the party and in this novel, V-era's machinations
behind the scenes (you seem to be discounting "V" altogether btw), the
various narrative agencies etc, in some depth.

But we're on to Chapter 10 now -- V.V. (14). So let's try not to spoil it.

Eddins, with his misreadings of _GR_ -- of the "cycle of infection and
death" (724) which Blicero wants to break out from, of Enzian's attempt to
emulate Blicero with the 00001, of Slothrop's "Orphic naturalism" as some
sort of "anti-gnostic gnosis" which makes it Christian (!) etc etc -- seeks,
as you do, to rewrite Pynchon's work as Christian parable. As Doug might
say, it takes "considerable shuck and jive" to do this, including your
ungrounded claim of having "defeated" Pynchon's depiction of the 175s and
their elevation of Blicero to mythic paragon.

And, I'd be pretty sure that Eddins didn't mean that aside about Pynchon
being of "the Devil's Party without knowing it" as a "compliment" (if you
read it in the actual context of his whole paragraph, and his thesis, that
is). Pynchon is not Milton, not by a long stretch.

best


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                         Words for Salman Rushdie

                Our thanks to you and to Marianne Wiggins
       for recalling those of us who write to our duty as heretics,
 for reminding us again that power is as much our sworn enemy as unreason,
            for making us all look braver, wiser, more useful
                        than we often think we are.

                  We pray for your continuing good health,
                       safety and lightness of spirit.

                                         Thomas Pynchon, 12 March 1989
                                       _The New York Times Book Review_

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