lawyers & genocide & Pynchon

[Doug Millison]

How come Manhattan has all the lawyers while New Jersey has all the 
toxic waste dumps?
New Jersey had first choice.

I like lawyer jokes just as much as my lawyer friends do -- some of 
my best friends are lawyers, after all -- but I have to wonder about 
some comments made recently here about lawyers with regard to suits 
against corporations allied with war criminals, on behalf of victims 
of those corporations.

On Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! radio show 
(http://www.democracynow.org) this morning I heard a American 
historian -- I didn't catch his name, only heard part of the show  -- 
talking about black history and the perennial issue (albeit an issue 
that receives virtually no mainstream media coverage) of reparations 
that might be owed to the African-American community for past crimes 
committed against them.  That's a complex issue, of course, and I 
have no interest in debating it in this forum.  But one thing he said 
seems relevant to our discussion of Pynchon, especially the way 
Pynchon brings to light little-known historical situations 
(multinational corporate involvement in the Nazi project before and 
during WWII in GR, which -- despite numerous statements to the 
contrary in this forum over the years -- at the time of GR's 
publication in '73 was not at all widely known or acknowledged in the 
U.S., and which certainly has never figured in a novel of GR's 
stature or significance) and weaves them into his fiction, or brings 
historical situations that may be known (the early American period in 
M&D) and gives us a different perspective on them.  The historian on 
the radio was talking about a value beyond monetary compensation, in 
exposing the facts to discussion, in reclaiming history that has been 
ignored or covered-up or otherwise neglected.

To write off the attempt to secure justice for individual victims of 
Nazi war crimes as the work of greedy lawyers, or craven anti-Nazi 
propagandists (I must ask, what's not to like about that particular 
concept?), seems heartless, to use one of the kinder adjectives that 
comes to mind, and I have to wonder at the motives that might 
underlie repetition of this sort of assertion in our discussion. 
After all, assessing damages for injury, death, theft, etc., and 
awarding damages as part of the judicial process goes virtually all 
the way back to the very beginning of recorded history -- in the 
parts of the world influenced by the Judeo-Christian tradition, we 
find in the earliest books of the Old Testament discussion of what 
constitutes appropriate compensation for victims of crime; the 
concept is hardly new, although its expression will certainly change 
over time.

To the contrary, the whole area of bringing war criminals and their 
accomplices to justice, adjudicating the crimes that occur during 
times of war, moving towards punishment and reparations where 
appropriate even if it's not always possible to make the journey all 
the way to reconciliation and healing -- that seems to me an arena 
where lawyers and judges really do shine and demonstrate the 
healthiest sort of motivations and ambitions. That's one of the 
messages that comes through loud and clear in  "The Quest for 
Justice" by  Aryeh Neier in the March 8, 2001 issue of New York 
Review of Books, an essay that discusses a number of new books:


  A Country Unmasked
  by Alex Boraine
  466 pages, $29.95 (hardcover)
  published by Oxford University Press

  Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State
  Terror and Atrocity
  by Priscilla B. Hayner and with a preface
  by Timothy Garton Ash
  340 pages, $27.50 (hardcover)
  published by Routledge

  Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics
  of War Crimes Tribunals
  by Gary Jonathan Bass
  402 pages, $29.95 (hardcover)
  published by Princeton University Press

  Crimes Against Humanity: The Struggle
  for Global Justice
  by Geoffrey Robertson and with an
  introduction by Kenneth Roth
  554 pages, $30.00 (hardcover)
  published by New Press

  Kosovo Report: Conflict, International
  Response, Lessons Learned
  a report from the Independent
  International Commission on Kosovo and
  with an address by Nelson Mandela
  372 pages, $49.95 (hardcover), $15.95
  (paperback)
  published by Oxford University Press

  For Humanity: Reflections of a War
  Crimes Investigator
  by Richard J. Goldstone and with a
  foreword by Sandra Day O'Connor
  152 pages, $18.50 (hardcover)
  published by Yale University Press

http://www.nybooks.com/nyrev/WWWfeatdisplay.cgi?20010308031R

The article makes clear, contrary to some views expressed here 
recently, that lawyers and judges who seek justice for the victims of 
war crimes, and who seek to help communities to heal in the wake of 
war, fight against some of the darkest forces at work in the world 
today, and in so doing deserve our support and praise instead of 
destructive criticism, cynicism, or ridicule -- those later responses 
serving only to promote more war crime and less justice, and seeking 
to keep covered-up the crimes of the past.

I'd argue that's contrary to Pynchon's project, too, based on the 
evidence in his novels of a desire to bring unknown or little-known 
or misunderstood history to light, within a fictional setting.  I 
also acknowledge a certain level of frustration and irritation and 
perhaps even dislike for lawyers in Pynchon's fiction, too -- M&D in 
particular targets them.  Having said that, Pynchon's clear sympathy 
for the victims of genocide (especially evident in GR and M&D) 
inclines me to believe that he would applaud the work of those 
lawyers and judges who work on their behalf in the world today, 
especially in those courts (Neier mentions many) which do not 
represent (as they did after WWII) the victors judging the vanquished.
-- 
d  o  u  g    m  i  l  l  i  s  o  n  <http://www.online-journalist.com>