peated point of contention here ...

[Dave Monroe]

Okay, I'm good'n'cranky now.  Pardon me,
ev'rybody--well, everybody 'cept th' Cap'n here--but
I'm going to take the liberty of not being any better
behaved than our Antipodean freund here, so ...

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:

> When someone dares to make such a distinction, and
> it's a distinction which is made on page 666 of the 
> novel itself,

What distinction is that again?  I'm all for citation
when/where possible, myself.  Believe it or not, and
even in this day and age, not everyone has everything
at their fingertips at all times ...

> there's always this interminable hue and cry
> about it (only from one or two people, of course,
but 
> both are loud and rude).

This would be vs. sniffy and obnoxious then.  But do
let me point out that I hear regularly from people who
simply don't want to put up with your shit anymore, so
they stay offlist ...

> I think that the conspicuous absence of the
> Holocaust from _GR_ serves at least a couple of
> purposes. (The phrase reminds me a little of the
> "Excluded Middle" which Oedipa faces up to in _Lot
> 49_, and which we will hopefully be able to discuss
> next month.)

So long as we don't have to deal with yr little non
sequitur interruptions.  Keep the bait in the bucket
next time 'round, Cap'n ...

> the novel very clearly represents the fact that the
> war itself was not being fought over the Holocaust
at 
> all

Well, duh.  "I'll take 'The Bleeding Obvious' for five
hundred, Alex."  The novel, however, hardly "very
clearly represents" much of anything, certainly not on
any thematic level, and often not on any narrative or
even descriptive level, else there wouldn't be quite
the critical cottage industry which has grown up
around it, would there?  The opening episode alone ...

> And, I think the fact that the Holocaust is
> conspicuously absent from the text is something
> which immediately strikes the reader. 

I think this is where I came in as well, although,
again, this is hardly an "absence" in the sense of
"just plain not there."  Like, say, a mechanical clock
in Imperial Rome or beachfront property in Bohemia
(hey, wait ...) ...

> It brings the Holocaust (and questions about why
> Pynchon chose *not* to depict it) to the fore, where
> depicting it might actually have served to engender
> the reader's complacency about it.

"Complacency"?  But, again, points I have made, and
have had dismissed to attacked, here myself ...

> Also, I think that there are other, equally valid,
> reasons why Pynchon would not want to appropriate
> the horror and suffering of so many for the purpose
> of a (fictional, literary) text, as many other
> people here have suggested.

Including me, of course, though, again, I don't recall
your having been quite so amenible to the suggestion
at the time (at any time I've made it) ...

> After all, how could Pynchon have known what it
> was like? How could he claim to "own" that 
> experience? (Perhaps through Pirate's "Talent" ...
?)

"Write what you know?"  Thomas Pynchon?  Gravity's
Rainbow?  If that little dictum breaks down anywhere
... though, again, I'm all for an ethics of
appropriation.  But are we now back to perhaps putting
a little credence into that reading of Otto's and
Doug's of (ostensibly) Pirate's (ostensible) "dream"
as readible as both an evacuation from an air raid AND
an evacuation to a concentration camp?  That posting
of yrs from May 15th, 1999 (?) was a bit of a
revelation to me, I must admit.  Reasonable,
reasonably polite, open to all sorts of possibilties
you'd (loudly, rudely) shut the door on (and continued
to shut the door on) by the time I arrived here, some
thirteen or so months later.  What a difference a year
makes ...

> And I think it's possible that the JFK assassination
> might have been intended to -- *might have been* -- 
> just the same sort of "Excluded Middle" or
> conspicuous absence in _Lot 49_ that the Holocaust
> is in _GR_. But like cjhurtt the novel itself hasn't
> been particularly successful in conveying that to me
> as a reader.

Think you meant, "But I agree with cjhurtt, the novel
itself ..." or somesuch here (vs. "neither cjhurtt nor
the novel has been particularly successful," which is
how this ultimately scans), but I'm nothing if not a
charitable reader (though I can see that I'm going to
be a little short on pocket change after tonight ...).
 Note by the way the little rhetorical seemingly
solidarity-building name-dropping trick throughout
here, but ... but I see you're reconsidering Hollander
as well here, so ...

> If _Lot49_ were intended by Pynchon to be an
> "encrypted meditation" on JFK's assassination, then
> two possibilities emerge: first, that myself and
> many others are simply not very good readers
> (bereft of that so-called "magic eye") and so we
> need someone like Charles Hollander to come along
> and tell us what the novel is "really" about;

This, I belive, is actually Hollander's position,
though I think he'll claim that his readings are
perfectly obvious.  There's a certain indeterminate
(inetntional or no?) irony to outright contradiction
here that I've gone from finding  frustrating to
amusing to charming, even.  Curmudgeonly.  Gruff but
lovable, in that Ed Asner sort of way ...

> or secondly, that the novel itself has not been
> successful in its aim. Neither of these two
> alternatives seems attractive to me,

Tough shit, I guess.  Binaries, binaries ... me, I
think Hollander points out some important vectors
there, but that, given the potential infinity thereof,
we're far from determining any sort of ultimate
interpretive resultant.  Even if Pynchon hiself were
to come down from the mountain and deliver us his
"intentions" engraved on stone tablets.  Might I again
point out that, were Pynchon's texts transparent media
fo their author's putative "intentions," we all
wouldn't be throwing this little soiree, now, would
we?  Just a buncha guys on a porch, whittlin' away,
sayin' "Pynchon sez ...," "Yep, sure got that right
..." ...

> but I'm wondering whether the "Excluded Middle"
> position is the possibility that _Lot 49_ *isn't* an
> "encrypted meditation" on the assassination of JFK?

I'm wondering just how honest that "wondering" is
here, myself.  But, again, the Kennedy assassination
sure is a  context for The Crying of Lot 49, and, in
particular, the machinations of "The Courier's
Tragedy."  What's leaked out about TRP's consternation
over JFK's demise only reinforces that point.  And I'm
"wondering" what he might have had to say after RFK
and MLK, Jr. met similar ends.   I'm guessing he felt
nigh unto prescient.  Again, hope Hollander's booking
archive time at that U of Texas library ...

> Whether or not the absent/present Charles Hollander
> is willing to discuss his admirable body of work
here 
> remains to be seen.

I'm sure Hollander will be touched by your admiration
here, esp. after all those accusations of hacking into
your computer and the antisemitisms you apparently
levelled at him.  I can see why he bailed out here,
and why he dropped by to crow a bit on the subject. 
Okay, now, if memory serves correctly, there'll be the
final quick potshot, followed by the abrupt turn back
to whatever the ostensible topic is (V., I presume). 
I'm always a sucker for the ol' dievrsionary tactic,
I'm afraid.  But let's check the ol' inbox, shall we
...


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