V.V. (13) "And they heard a Bondel one night ... " 277.17 (was Re: Eddins on Blicero

[Dave Monroe]

A few quick impersonations ...

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> 
> Kautsky? Italia Irredentia?

Again, spent and recouped force plus a nationalist
cause feeding into fascist ascendancy ....

> I think one needs to factor in Weissmann's
> characterisation: he is paranoid,
> deranged, attention-seeking ...

With a fashionable interest in fascism ...

> "merely"??? And, actually, the "present" of
> Mondaugen and Stencil retelling
> the story is 1956, the "present" of its writing
> several years after that.

The "present" within "Mondaugen's Story," and my
response stands as follows ...

> > but it's that
> > fascist and Nazi future that is most darkly
> > foreshadowed here.  This should not be
> deemphasized
 
> I don't think there's ever going to be a problem
> about that here! But the
> actual text should probably get a look-in every now
> and then too. 

Which is why I went through that list, right on back
to that cabaret in that quarter ...

I think
> Pynchon has built Mondaugen's story around the
> details of the 1922 rebellion
> of Abraham Morris and his 1,200 or so Bondels
> against the British/Dutch
> Administration in the South-West Protectorate; it is
> this which has been the
> direct cause of Foppl's Siege Party after all. The
> narrative describes the
> assembled guests as forming a "tiny European
> Conclave or League of Nations"
> (235.18): this is a direct allusion. (And, let alone
> "deemphasized", old
> Hugh Godolphin's active presence in the goings-on
> seems to have been totally
> discounted, whereas Weissmann's is
> disproportionately exaggerated.) Finally,
> that scene where the guests gather on the roof to
> pop champagne corks as the
> British/French biplanes drop bombs on the Bondel
> camp is something of a
> climax to proceedings (276-7). 

Again, there are reasons why ceratin stories get
written about certian times, at certain times. 
Pynchon is not writing a history here, but he does
respect historical fact ...

Rather than merely
> "foreshadowing" the Nazi
> future

"Merely"?  And, again, rememebr, Stencil, Pynchon, we
all come after that "mere" fact ...

 -- which is the "superficial" and "hardly
> profound" connection being
> made in the chapter,

Which is hardly to say it's not being made.  Keep in
mind that Pynchonian modesty as well ...

 as Pynchon himself comments in
> that 1969 letter to
> Thomas Hirsch, a connection resting largely on that
> anomalous passage at 245
> -- the historically factual events interwoven with
> the fiction seem to be a
> comment on the racism, decadence and complacent
> cruelty of the "besieged"
> Westerners.

And Fascist Europe is to be excluded from said
"Westerners"?  Again, should not be deemphasized ...

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