hollander for the mass, part 6

[Dave Monroe]

Can't ... escape ... Pynchon List ... anyway, keep in
mind, there's a difference between speculating on how
Pynchon might be employing certain elements, and  
speculating on how they might actually be functioning
in that alleged real world.  Often no small confusion
betwixt these orders here, which, admittedly, become
blurred when you're dealing with someone as seemingly
omniscient as Pynchon ("thomas pynchon knows about
these things, i'm sure"--this isn't exactly a solid
assumption) with texts as well-informed as those
Pynchonian ones.  Hollander's economics, his economic
history, his geopolitics, whatever, may be simplistic
here, but he's commenting on a novel, not an economic
treatise, as a literary critic, not an economist, and,
I suspect, reading a bit of contemporary (to Pynchon,
to those texts, to Hollander, who seems more of
Pynchon's genration than anyone else here) thought on
the matter into/out of (this is a bit blurry as well,
but not necessarily any more so than reading, say,
Brown or Graves or Eliade or Melville or Weber or ...
into/out of those Pynchonian texts).  He does provide,
is his biographical notes on Pynchon ("Pynchon's
Inferno"), some compelling reasons for assuming a
certain interest on Pynchon's part in such dynastic
intrigues ...

http://www.itap.de/homes/otto/pynchon/inferno.htm

... and, again, thanks, Otto, for making this readily
available ...

--- lorentzen-nicklaus
<lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de> wrote:
> 
> what interests me here is this thesis about the
> reasons for germany's economic recovery. i've read
> this a couple of times, but i really can't help 
> it: hollander, in fact, suggests that it was some
> gold and a conspiracy that helped the german
industry 
> up again! he also suggests that this is the way  
> pynchon sees it. that's why, so hollander, there
> are so many german refs in pynchon's work. oh well,
> where to start?! a general problem with hollander's
> approach is that he, in his creative paranoia,
> overrates the significance of family-dynasties for
> modern economy and for the overall world-system.
> actually, not all events are directly connected with
> each other, not at all ... the oss- & 
> vatican-connections, relatively well known, can
> certainly not explain the german "wirtschaftswunder"

> (economy wonder) in the 1950s. let's see: the main 
> reason why there was, unlike formerly planed, no
> real dismantling or "socialization" of the germany's
> industrial force, is, as everybody knows, the rise
> of the cold war which made the usa reconsider their
> europe- and  germany-politics. in this context,
> germany was re-integrated into the community of
> western states, and this was both, a political and
> an economic thing (outlets!). if you want to call
> this process,which was completed by the mid 50s, a
> "conspiracy", i can't help it. & west-germany's
> "crippled economic capacity" caused by the bombings
> and minor dismantlings must, of course, also  
> be seen in terms of "capital extinction"; this was,
> actually, rather a helpful factor to make the
> wirtschaftswunder happen. all the old stuff was
> already gone. oh, & then there was that
> corea-conflict which caused large parts of the
> us-industry into war-production, & this made way on
> the world-market for the german (and, i guess, also
> the japanese) economy to move in again ... thomas  
> pynchon knows about these things, i'm sure ...
> sometimes hollander sounds like the "x-files" ...

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