Corroboration for Doug (was Re: Sanders ...

[jbor]

----------
>From: Doug Millison <DMillison at ftmg.net>
>

> 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."

More instructively, here's the full sentence:

                [ ... ] When I
    wrote _V._ 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.

And here's what follows it:

                [ ... ] When I
    wrote _V._ 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. Which is hardly profound; it must occur to anybody who gets into
    it even as superficially as I did. But since reading McLuhan especially,
    and stuff here and there on comparative religion, I feel now the thing
    goes much deeper.

>
> 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.

Funny, the words "the Holocaust is central to _GR_" keep ringing in my ears.
But, whatever ....

> If "jbor" is certain he/she knows precisely what Pynchon thinks when he says
> "the thing goes much deeper"

 ... *than* what he'd previously thought, that is, that "the 1904 campaign
[w]as a sort of dress rehearsal for what later happened to the Jews in the
'30's and '40's." It's pretty straightforward. Paul's explained it pretty
thoroughly I think.

best