Blicero and his critics

[Terrance]

We learn in Gravity's Rainbow that Major Weissman, while at
Nordhausen serving the Nazis as "Schutzhaftlingsfuhrer"  at
the Rocket works, is "enchanted" by the name of the 
adjoining town--Bleicherode.  That name, as Enzian
recognizes, mimics the early German word for death,
"Blicker" (GR 322). The early Germans saw death as
"bleaching and blankness." Enamored of that signification, 
Weissman assumes it as his SS code name, later Latinized to
"Dominus Blicero."  Blicero's "love for the last explosion,"
his nihilistic pleasure at the prospect of even his own
possible annihilation (GR 96), points up his death obsession
and the aptness of the name that he takes as his own. In the
context of the novel, Blicero's fascination with a
transcendent "Destiny" and his increasingly self-centered
maneuvers to realize that destiny represent  both the death-
directed idealist tradition in European thought and the
German Romanticism that can be associated with the Nazis own
Imperialistic weltanschauung. 

The romanticism of Major Weissman-Captain Blicero is best
understood in terms of his affinity for the poetry of Rainer
Maria Rilke....

Jeffrey S. Baker, Amerikka Uber Alles

Baker goes on to cite Hohmann's study of GR and Rilke, the
best study of the two I have discovered and have recommended
several times. In it, the critic does not hesitate to name
Blicero and Weissmann evil Faustian Nazi homosexual
Sadomasochists.  

Can all the critical responses to these characters be
attributed to their waspish biases, their homophobia, their
white bread conservatism? 

I can excerpt from 50 more, diserations even,  if you like,
but I doubt this is what we want here. 

Best,