Pynchon & rap

[Doug Millison]

We can disagree about the meaning of "obvious" and "central", I suppose.
You say it's not obvious that the Ss in GR's opening scene refer to the Nazi
SS, that the evacuation refers to the transportation of Holocaust victims to
their doom, but I think in Pynchon's context, a novel set in WWII of which
Nazi war crimes are perhaps the most widely known and sensational fact (even
as it can be argued that the U.S. use of the atomic bomb to attack Japan
should be equally condemned, and certainly there has been a kind of
"propaganda" effort that has kept Nazi crimes on the front burner and U.S.
crimes on the back burner), this does not require a great leap of the
imagination, that it seems to me an obvious reference. Several people here
on Pynchon-L, and critics elsewhere, have discussed how the Holocaust is, in
fact, one of several key (a synonym for "central" in this context) concerns
in GR, and many have mentioned how the "presence of the absence" along with
direct references work to focus the reader's attention on the Holocaust. My
point in reproducing "rj/jbor's" post, in which he seemed to agree -- or at
least entertain the notion that it might be an interesting way to read the
passage -- with my reading of GR's opening as referring to the Holocaust,
was to underscore how "obvious" this reading can seem, no matter how he/she
later came to disagree with virtually every assertion I and others have made
regarding references to the Holocaust in GR and its importance to the novel.


Consider V., a novel that also includes many direct references to the
Holocaust, and which (as Sven Lindqvist does in Exterminate All the Brutes)
traces Holocaust roots to European genocide in Africa, a subject Pynchon
will return to in M&D, and extend to North America.  Later, Pynchon produces
GR, a novel with a central story line that concerns Slothrop, his obsession
with the Rocket, his trip to the place of the Rocket's manufacture where, in
a sequence of scenes that more than one reader has found the most powerful
of the novel, the reader learns that Holocaust victims, slave laborers, are
responsible for building this weapon -- Pokler's discovery of his shared
responsibility and guilt for the fate of these victims is indeed "central"
to the novel. If it's not "obvious" on page one of the novel, that the
Holocaust is a central concern of GR does become obvious by the time we get
to the end of the long set piece that is Pokler's story. If we've read V., a
reader may very well be prepared to see the Holocaust in GR's opening
sequence. By the time a reader gets to M&D, I think you can argue that
Pynchon's focus on European genocide -- in Europe, Africa, America -- is
consistent, and important, from the beginning of his novel-writing career.

The Holocaust is not Pynchon's only concern in GR, not by a long shot -- the
novel is encyclopedic, he touches on a very large number of topics, and
weaves together many important threads as important or more so.  This is one
of the astonishing things about his powers as an artist, that he can in fact
gather together so many of the key issues and events of the 20th century and
spin them into such wonderful works of art.  But it may help to remember how
Pynchon himself seems to put the Holocaust at the center of his concerns, as
he does in the "Is It OK to be a Luddite?" essay:  "By 1945, the factory
system -- which, more than any piece of machinery, was the real and major
result of the Industrial Revolution -- had been extended to include the
Manhattan Project, the German long-range rocket program and the death camps,
such as Auschwitz" -- a list that would seem to me to include three of the
most important elements of GR.


-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Eckhardt [mailto:thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de]
Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2001 12:58 AM
To: Doug Millison
Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: Pynchon & rap


Doug wrote:

> 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:

I wrote, as you quoted:

"To claim that it is obvious that the Holocaust is a central theme in GR is
ridiculous and
insulting to the novel (...)"

Which is, alas, something different. Just try to imagine the words "it is
obvious" written in capital letters. Perhaps this helps.

Thomas