Pynchon & rap

[Doug Millison]

Thomas:
"To claim that it
is obvious that the Holocaust is a central theme in GR is ridiculous and
insulting to the novel ("Have you read Thomas Pynchon's novel GR?" "Yes, it
deals
with the Holocaust." "What does it say?" "The Holocaust was bad.")."


It's hardly "ridiculous and insulting" to call the Holocaust central to the
novel, or to argue, as I have done, that the Holocaust is one of several
central concerns in GR:  

"Have you read Thomas Pynchon's novel GR?"

"Yes, it's about the V-2 rocket and what the Rocket says about the 20th
century, and it's about quite a few other things, too. (In fact, it's been
called an "encyclopedic" narrative because it touches on so many things.)
The main story line concerns Slothrop, an American officer who is obsessed
with the V-2. He traces the V-2 to the place in Germany where it was
manufactured, in part by Holocaust slave labor. Pynchon seems to use the
Holocaust, and especially this example of the slaves who helped to
manufacture the V-2, as a way to talk about the way modern society, and
especially about the multinational corporations (Pynchon speaks of "cartels"
in GR) that control governments, tend to turn people into machines and use
people as expendable production factors in their greed for ever-larger
profits."



Thomas:
"jbor has never claimed that there are no allusions to the Holocaust in GR."

Incorrect.  The whole debate/discussion/debacle began when I questioned
rjackson (that's what he was calling himself back then) about his assertion
that the Pynchon had left the Holocaust out of GR.  rjackson later changed
the statement to the "largely absent" you refer to.