V.V. (14) SHOCK and SHROUD

[jbor]

The question of whether SHROUD actually talks (286, 295), or whether it's a
conversation which is going on inside Benny's head, is an interesting one.
The lack of inverted commas and the mention of "another imaginary
conversation" at 295.5 seems to indicate the latter. But it's certainly not
clear-cut, because what SHROUD is "saying" seems to be stuff which Benny has
never considered before. Maybe the appearance and uses to which SHROUD and
SHOCK are being put is part of a learning curve for Benny. (Indeed, in many
respects Benny is the precursor of Slothrop in _GR_; imo there are strong
elements of both the Bildungsroman and the Zeitroman in Pynchon's novels.)

Offset like this to an inanimate mannikin's pov, this glancing reference to
the "photographs of Auschwitz" (295.15) seems to speak to MalignD's and
others' comments here about Pynchon's (almost ritual) reluctance to depict
the events and victims of the Holocaust directly in an aesthetic (and
commercial) medium such as the novel:

----------
>From: MalignD at aol.com
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re:  new book
>Date: Sun, Jan 28, 2001, 3:06 AM
>

> "Many writers thake their inspiration from Theodor Adorno's dictum that to
> write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric."
>
> It is this, one believes, that led Pynchon--a young man with no experience of
> the war--to keep the Holocaust at the edges of his novel, to refrain from
> attempting a narrative he, certainly, lacked the stature (choose your own
> word) to address.

best