pynchon-l-digest V2 #1670

[Doug Millison]

rj:
>But trying to freight Bush and Disney and IBM or whoever as "criminal" and
>"Nazi" isn't gonna change anything.

Certainly it will change something. For starters, it sets the 
historical record straight, casting light on what was obscure, and 
putting in proper perspective corporations and individuals who still 
have a tremendous impact on our lives. Knowing that the Bush family, 
or IBM -- if the evidence show it to be so -- willingly aided and 
abetted Hitler and the Nazis and profited thereby is something that 
people should know in order to be able to intelligently decide if 
they want to continue to vote for or patronize or otherwise support 
them. Knowing this sordid history might also shed light on current 
actions and policies of these entities. If the evidence shows that 
the Bush family aligned itself with Hitler and the Nazis, and we see 
President Bush supporting policies that echo Nazi policies -- 
regarding immigration, or race relations in the U.S. (that pesky 
Ashcroft controversy, for example) say, or foreign policy with 
imperial/colonial implications (the recent bombing of Iraq) -- it 
would be easier to understand, put them in context, and treat them 
appropriately.  We might also look at the way that IBM, and other 
multinational corporations that happily profited from doing business 
with the Nazis, enable and profit from neo-fascist policies elsewhere 
in the world after WWII. Likewise we could look at Disney's role in 
promoting racist stereotypes, which they continue to do of course, or 
promoting a sort of blind allegiance to the corporate way of life, 
and how that might be seen as some sort of extension of the Nazi 
racial program.

You -- well, I do anyway --  have to wonder why Pynchon went to all 
the trouble to uncovering the historical business links between the 
Nazis and the Allies that he shows us in GR. (Or, indeed, why he 
takes such pains to illuminate all the little-known historical 
situations that he illuminates in his writing.)  It seems rather 
obvious to me that he felt it worth doing, because he did it.  That 
GR appears to displace post WWII Cold War and Vietnam War concerns 
onto the WWII setting would seem to indicate that Pynchon is calling 
our attention to the way that policies and actions set in motion 
during WWII (and in the run-up to it) continue in a War that never 
really ends.  He explicitly shows that the U.S. missile program -- 
which casts a shadow of nuclear destruction over the entire planet, 
both in GR and in the real world -- grows out of the Nazi long 
distance rocket program. He gives us a Nazi in Vineland ("the 
notorious Karl Bopp, former Nazi Luftwaffe officer and subsequently 
useful American citizen") -- a reminder, perhaps, of the way that the 
Nazi program lives on, or its influence might still be seen, in the 
Reagan administration -- and in that novel he even shows us how 
computers hem in the possibilities for individual liberty...shades of 
IBM computers in the hands of the Nazis.  In M&D he goes back and 
digs out the roots of these historical trends, depicting the early 
development of corporations (which bear such poisoned fruit in V. and 
GR), and the colonial programs that persist to the present day and 
which appear in such stark outline in the genocidal expansionist 
program of Hitler and the Nazis (in GR's setting). Pynchon does not 
refrain from depicting crimes, linking them to specific individuals 
or corporations or governments, and trying to understand why and how 
they happened -- why should we?

-- 
d  o  u  g    m  i  l  l  i  s  o  n  <http://www.online-journalist.com>