Corroboration for Doug (was Re: Sanders ...

[Paul Mackin]

Millison:  Before firing off another post try to think it through a little. By
"the thing goes much deeper" P may have been expressing a rather simple point,
one going something like this: The European Jews were a Western people. They
thought prettry much like you and me. They virtually WERE you and me. Even for
a lad of 26 working in the year 1963 visualizing the Holocaust from their
perspective, if that had been what he set out to do, would not have presented a
totally insurmountable challenge. The Jews were victims pure and simple and
that is what the Holocaust felt like to them.  The obliterated Herero on the
other hand had NOT been  a Western People. Though  they felt pain and bled  and
were victims  of an oppressor in an undeniable Western sense,  still their
responses to trauma  and life and death  might be expected to be much
different. To express it vulgarly they were more Hindoo than we are. Not
individualistic, so that  concepts of victimization, and blame,  etc.,  might
just not go very far in portraying them fairly (from their viewpoit) in what P
intended to be a serious nonparochial novel.   Pynchon realizes in retropect
that he was ill equiped back then to do justice in this area and feels some
regret for it. I'm putting it very simplistically but perhaps at this point
something simple is needed.

In the same vein it seems probably to me that P would today feel a tiny bit
sheepish about the way he protrayed an African American jazz musician in that
same first novel. His view of Sphere seems only a bit less juvenile than that
of the college boys.

                                    P.

Doug Millison wrote:

> I just asked the question, feel free to answer, or not.
>
> It's instructive, perhaps, to quote Pynchon's letter again, when he says, "I
> was thinking of the 1904 campaign as a sort of dress rehearsal for what
> later happened to the Jews in the '30's and '40's." Clearly, Pynchon makes a
> connection between the Herero genocide in Africa and the genocide of the
> Jews in WWII.
>
> I've never argued "that Pynchon only depicts Herero history as a metaphor
> for the Holocaust"
>
> -- such would be "jbor's" fiction/revision/deconstruction
>
> of what I've actually said.  (For somebody who squeals so loudly
> when he/she
>
> thinks people are putting words in his/her mouth, "jbor" sure doesn't
>
> hesitate to do the same, in virtually every post). To the contrary,
> I've
>
> consistently argued that Pynchon successfully avoids using these unfortunate
>
> victims of genocide as mere metaphors, and in earlier discussions I've
>
> pointed to a Pynchon Notes article that makes that very same point
> with
>
> regard to Pynchon's Holocaust allegory in GR (that phrase comes from
> the
>
> author of that PN article, not my construction).
>
> If "jbor" is certain he/she knows precisely what Pynchon thinks when he says
> "the thing goes much deeper" (deeper than what Pynchon has to say in the
> letter, obviously), he/she should enlighten us. Pynchon says he's only
> giving it superficial treatment in this letter (as he sketches the outline
> of a complex set of issues involving McLuhan, comparitive religion, Herero,
> Jew, etc. but refrains from going deeper) -- but if "jbor" knows what
> Pynchon really means, please share that insight. I don't pretend to be able
> to read Pynchon's mind.
>
> " jbor"
> No, *you're* suggesting that I'm suggesting that, Doug. This would only be
> the case if I held with *your* contention that Pynchon only depicts Herero
> history as a metaphor for the Holocaust.
> ... you're simply
> unable to accept what it is Pynchon thinks "the thing goes much deeper"
> [sic]
>
> Doug Millison, Senior Editor
> Knowledge Management magazine
> (415) 348-3054
> DougMillison at ftmg.net
> www.destinationKM.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20010420/acda9e7a/attachment.html>