GR opening

[MalignD at aol.com]

<< But, as a number of people have now commented, the notions that Pynchon 
relegated the Holocaust to the status of a symbol or metaphor in his novel, 
or that he intentionally reduced its historical/moral significance to equal 
that of the Evacuation of Londoners during the Blitz in that opening scene,
are, in fact, quite offensive..>>rj

<<In the hands of a lesser artist, perhaps, using the Holocaust as "symbol or 
metaphor" might be "offensive", but that's certainly not the case in GR. ... 
At least one Pynchon scholar has anticipated and I think thoroughly 
demolished this kind of simplistic argument:>>millison

<< Are you agreeing or disagreeing with rj here? It is "the notions" that is 
the subject of "are...offensive," no? Did you read the subject as 
"Pynchon"?>>jody

Whether or not he is agreeing, it is Millison and not Pynchon to whom rj 
refers, as it was Millison's trumpeting of "Holocaust as central metaphor" 
that was offensive, precisely because it was so "simplistic."  One might say, 
as well, grotesque. 

Pynchon's choice was not to make the Holocaust central to the novel--which is 
what rj reasonably and correctly argued at the time--for what I think are 
very good reasons, not least among them that it was a topic he, Pynchon, was 
without appropriate stature to address.  Offense was given not by Pynchon, 
but via the lack of taste and proportion exhibited in the Jewish 
extermination being reduced to a metaphor, a leit motif, as if it were so 
many red sails in the sunset.