Benny's Job

[Dave Monroe]

Now there is "obviously" (again, I'm always open to surprise here) some sort 
of associative catenation (my grasping at a phrase here) suggested at one 
point between the slaughter of the Herero in Southwest Africa under German 
colonial rule and the slaughter of Jews in Europe under the Third Reich in 
V. ("60,000" Herero vs. "6,000,000" Jews, which is not to forget the 
millions more--Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, political prisoners, Slavs, 
to name other prominent victimized groups).

And, as I recall, even you yourself have posted recognizing, again, an 
associative chain bewteen the extinction of the  dodo at the hand of the 
Dutch settlers on Mauritius (again, why is this mentioned with some 
prominence?), the Holocaust in WWII Europe, perhaps various other such 
slaughters, again including that of the Herero (leading up to, I'd, among 
others, argue, that "convergence" in global thermonuclear holocaust 
seemingly impending after that "final delta-t") in Gravity's Rainbow.

These associations are as "obviously" "in" the texts under discussion as 
much as anything I've read here, or elsewhere.  Is this being contested?  
The issue, it seems, is more of how they are associated, and to what ends.  
Now, I'm grandfathering (no offense intended) Doug out of the post-Paul de 
Man (a problematic enough figure to invoke here as it is, but I believe he 
was the one to really harp, and rightly so, on this issue) consternation 
over "allegory" vs. "symbol" or, more strongly, "metaphor."

The latter implies, according to de Man, an elision, an equivalence, between 
the terms involved where the former does not.  Which is why I generally tend 
to characterize the relationships involved as allegorical, analogous.  But, 
again, is it the case here that the suggestion that these relationships, 
whatever they may be, however they might be troped, are being suggested by 
the texts "tehmselves" is what is being contested?  No matter how strongly 
these realtionships might be being suggested?  No matter how explicitely 
tehy might even be being made?

This seems almost an interminable discussion here, I know, but it certainly 
is germane to a discussion of V., not in the least when we get not only to 
Mondaugen's Story, but to SHROUD as well, where stacks of junked cars will 
be compared to stacks of concentration camp victims.  And we've recently 
read an instance in which a reference to an Auschwitz (Oswiecim) victim is 
included in another associative catenation with an enoculated eye and a 
police fingerprinting in what was ostensibly "intended" as a humorous 
decription.

Do these instances reflect badly on Pynchon the author?  Or on the 
characters, the ostensible narrators involved?  Both?  Neither?  All valid 
questions as well here.  All related.  Not necessarily all requiring the 
same answer in each intance, not always even requiring the same 
considerations, but indeed requiring the same intensity of consideration.  
Again, I would issue caveats reagrding positing what someone might or might 
not have intended, might or might not have been capable of intending, 
saying, writing.  An "intention" need not even enter into it ...

But there are, indeed, an awful lot of "middles," an awful lot of 
possibilities being excluded here, exclusions which are constantly proving 
to be, indeed, "bad shit."  The relevance of the Holocaust to GR, of the JFK 
assasination to TCOL49, is manifold, enfolded in many, tectonic to origamic 
to fractal, ways, and I read no one but one saying anything otherwise here 
...
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