Benny's Job

[jbor]

----------
>From: "Dave Monroe" <davidmmonroe at hotmail.com>
>

> 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).

OK.

>
> 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.

My argument has always been that direct representations of, as well as even
less direct references and allusions to, the Holocaust are largely absent
from _GR_ and that this conspicuous absence is significant.

> 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?

Some, certainly.

> No matter how strongly
> these realtionships might be being suggested?  No matter how explicitely
> tehy might even be being made?

Well, there's the rub. Is the connection coco = gook made? In the text, by
the author? If it is, where?

> This seems almost an interminable discussion here, I know,

Does that need to be a bad thing?

> 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.

So, these other references somehow validate the coco = gook such that
Vietnamese people are cannibalistic amhibians interpretation?

> 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 ...

Well ... someone's saying something ... somewhere ... surely?

> 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
> ...

I would say that this is somewhat presumptuous. Regardless, why bother
trying to marginalise *any* alternative interpretation with this tactic?
What difference does it make if only one person is offering a point of view?
Indeed, I seem to recall you singing the praises of the "unique" nature of
Charles Hollander's interpretations yesterday, and yet today ... Sounds like
a double standard to me ...