hollander for the mass, part 1

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

 "in mid-may 1984, tinasky writes that events have conspired against her 'to 
give me the worst month since i got out of buchenwald.' pynchon often uses 
indicative names and place-names to give characters compact backgrounds and 
histories. oedipa maas in lot 49, for example, comes from a suburban town named 
kinneret-among-the-pines. kinneret is a name for the sea of galilee, where 
jesus' ministry flourished. after the destruction of jerusalem in a.d. 70, 
galilee became the main center of judaism in palestine; zionist colonization of 
the region began at the end of the nineteenth century. by naming oedipa's 
subdivision kinneret, pynchon suggests that oedipa is a jewish girl, from a 
jewish neighborhood.
 the allusion to the buchenwald concentration camp achieves the same effect for 
wanda. in a later letter, tinasky signs off from the 'commune of the cripled 
jewish nudist lesbian mothers for peace'. this is another pynchon-trope: giving 
a suggestive allusion early on and a conforming datum later."

                           --- charles hollander: where's wanda? the case of the 
                            bag lady and thomas pynchon. critique 38/2, pp. 
                            145-159, here 149 ---         


  as far as wanda is concerned, she might have been in buchenwald for her 
  radical political views.(for an analytical inmate-report on buchenwald see   
  eugen kogon's "der ss-staat"). & the commune-ref could also be a kind of 
  pc-critical joke, no? the whole argument, furthermore, is essentially based on 
  the assumption that pynchon really is or was wanda tinasky, a thesis, i'm 
  still not fully convinced of although the article offers a lot of material. 
  in a way the quoted passage is very characteristic for hollander's style of 
  argumentation

 kfl (from the "commune of epileptic post-protestant narco fathers for trees")