1945

[Terrance]

jbor wrote:

 But later we are told that it  was his fate to be "sent
east along with many others of his race"; the joke  being,
more or less on Pflaumbaum after all, though Leni would not
know it.

Is that a direct reference to the Holocaust?  


And, what do you make of the naphtha at the explosion? 

 Maybe Bland & Co.? Maybe not? 
 Are you familiar with the slur "Jewish Lightening"? 

At GR.582, where again we have the "paranoid" verb tenses
and moods and modalities, we have 1945 again.  
And we have Lyle Bland and what appears to be his hand, 
that Jew blamed,
fucked  under by the courts, attached till his was
bankrupt, and in the fullness of time, sent east along with
many others of his race." 



> 
> Leni's ambivalence towards Jewish people is an interesting study, and I
> think you'll find that Pynchon is interested to plumb the depths of *her*
> latent anti-Semitism rather than Frans's or the Nazis. 

I certainly agree that Leni is far more interesting in this
regard, ambiguities, latencies, that's the mature P's
characters, and his genius, or whatever. Franz is more of a
right angle, easier to plumb, but the Nazi element is there,
not because P wants to 
put people on trial, and I'm not at all comfortable with the
idea that the Holocaust is anything like a metaphor in GR,
that's in V. (I agree, development, maturity) where P gets
away with the car bodies stacked like Jewish Corpses because
it's Benny out in Elmira having an imaginary conversation
with SHROUD, fifteen  years ago, Hitler was crazy, or the
world was, is, crazy, flip/flop and so on, nothing at all
like what the mature artist (and I believe he is sincere,
though perhaps a little too critical, when he says he forgot
everything he learned when he wrote CL49, not a masterwork,
doesn't hold a candle to Mondaugan's Story) that wrote GR
accomplished.  But the Nazi element is important and so is
the Holocaust. I agree with Otto when he says that many
simply don't know, but of course we know. Remember, in the
Zone people don't know who is on trial and for what,
although they know where, of course this is because they
have Mindlessly Pleasured Burnt Out Brains. And I joked, but
I liked your comments to JBF, the text addressing YOU, the
subjective privilege of the individual reader may not be
science but it makes sense to think about GR this way, if
not all texts provided, and given a critical pluralism,  we
maintain parameters set by the text when we put our
subjective reading consciousness into words for others.
Great thing about going to school or teaching or book clubs
or these crazy lists. I'm able to read GR with folks from
Germany and from the 60s and so on. 

Later at the
> Studentenheim (later in her life, but before the Pflaumbaum mention in the
> text -- is this an important juxtaposition?) there is that apocryphal sexual
> encounter with the lesbian Jewess Rebecca (156 ff), where Leni is attracted
> to the "Jewess's darker colouring, her rawness", her "animal darkness". 

Yes, and note too that Mondaugen, in from Africa is also
Dark. While I think of it, you can see here in this episode
an example of P's use of the wind. It blows a tired Franz to
the rocket and Mondaugen to Franz or to GR from V. 

And
> then later on again when Leni takes up with Peter Sascha an externalised pov
> reports how Leni's "face darkened, Judaized by the words she speaks"
> (219-20); her Leftist allegiance becomes physicalised in this way, marking
> her as an enemy of the Reich just as if she was a Jew herself.

Yes, this is what I posted, Henry V, Shylock, Leni's
anti-Semitic jingle and so forth. 
This is a very important point. Is God Jewish? Are YOU? 


> 
> > I too tire of these peanut gallery pretenses and
> > pedantries)
> 
> Why the insult? Kai offered an opinion and some excellent textual direction.
> What's this thing about a "peanut gallery"? Talk about "elitism"!

I think I brought the the peanut gallery down with a
crackle, pop, he he he

But to Kai, I apologize, I misread your post, I thought it
was the guy in front of me telling his girl that his movie
sucks, over and over, and over....

> 
> > this Fear of God
> > Living or Dead, is a "German Sickness" in TRP's Fiction.
> 
> Not *just* a "German sickness", however. I don't understand why you are
> trying to take this in isolation from all the Protestant/Puritan stuff with
> Slothrop's ancestral baggage -- that doom-laden "hand of God" et al, the
> paper mills -- which is given the same, if not greater weight in the text.
> 
> best


I'm sure we will get to it, it much better, greater weight,
yes, but I want to finish this up this time. 

"All I want for Christmas is some gold, frankincense and
Myrrh.