V.V. (12) Pynchon's letter to Thomas F. Hirsch

[Dave Monroe]

For those of you following along at home, from
"Appendix: Pynchon's Reading for Gravity's Rainbow," a
Letter from Thomas Pynchon to on Thomas F. Hirsch, 8
January 1969, "reproduced with Pynchon's permission,"
in David Seed, The Fictional Labyrinths of Thomas
Pynchon (Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1988), pp. 240-3 ...

"When I wrote V. I was thinking of the 1904 campaign
as a sort of dress rehearsal for what later happened
to the Jews in the 30's and 40's.  Which is hardly
profound; it must occur to anybody who gets into it
even as superficially as I did.  But since reading
McLuhan especially, and stuff here and there on
comparative religion, I feel now the thing goes much 
deeper." (240)

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
 
> Let's see: "When I wrote _V._ ..." (as opposed,
> perhaps, to now?); "a sort
> of dress rehearsal"; "hardly profound";
> "superficially"; "I feel now the
> thing goes much deeper." I don't know that "a sort
> of dress rehearsal" does
> quite equate with "events" being "comparable" (or in
> what ways such a
> comparison might be said to be operating ...); and
> I'm not sure where (or
> why) you're suddenly invoking what Pynchon
> "intended" from what he writes in
> this letter to support your interpretations of his
> novels. ... 

... "hardly profound; it must occur to anybody who
gets into it even as superficially as I did."  Read:
that the Herero genocide (retrospectively, am trying
to avoid Whig histories here, though I'm not so sure
Pynchon is always succesful, or even desires to be, in
that respect) presages the Holocaust here ("here,"
being, for the moment, V.) is blatantly obvious, or
should be.  But, of course, wonders never cease, esp.
at Th' List ... "Superficially," by the way, is
Pynchon being his generally, in the few letters,
essys, whatever, that have reached publication, modest
self.  

In fact, the
> paragraph would seem to me to suggest precisely the
> opposite of what you
> were contending, i.e. that, by 1969, and certainly
> in respect to _GR_,
> Pynchon had come to "feel the thing goes much
> deeper" than any snug
> comparability between the Herero genocide and the
> Shoah.

"But I feel personally that the number done on the
Herero head by the Germans is the same number done on
the American Indian head by our own colonists and 
what is now being done on the Buddhist head in Vietnam
by the Christian minority in Saigon and their
advisors: the imposition of a culture valuing analysis
and differentiation on a culture that valued unity and
integration." (241)

Okay, so were both in agreement that those "sames"
there are potentially, at least, problematic.  You
will no doubt argue that the fact that he hasn't
included the Holocaust on this pass means he meant to
exclude it "by 1969," by the writing of Gravity's
Rainbow, whilst I'll go right ahead and make the
obvious argument that, seeing as he's already set up
the allusive chain, Herero genocide to Holocaust, he
need not repeat it, and therefore need not write, "the
same number done on the Jewish, Slavic, Gypsy,
homosexual, Jehovah's Witness and so forth head by the
Nazis" (or, perhaps, even, "the same number done on
any number of ethnic minority heads by Stalin").

One might here, however, differentiate to some extent
between colonial (European/American on Africa, Asian,
Native American) violence and European-on-European
violence here.   Here's where one might particularly
differentiate between the Herero genocide and the
Holocaust.  I think we'll both be provisionally
satisfied with that reading, at least until we each
start to do our own thing with it.  

But, in the context of V., South West Africa under von
Trotha and Europe under Hitler are made adjacent--as
they remain nonetheless in that letter--with chilling
economy (e.g., "but still not too bad").  Gravity's
Rainbow, as I've argued, and as is, again, blatantly
obvious, rather expands the field (which is the
movement in that letter as well), perhaps most
immediately in response to the (just winding down)
Vietnam war, not to mention "our common nightmare, the
Bomb," but, again, Germany, WWII, "it must occur to
anybody who gets into it"--well, alomst anybody ...

Do keep in mind, however, that we're ostensibly
discussing V. at the moment.  But to say that "the
whole thing goes deeper" is hardly to discount either
the importance or the horror of either very real, very
awful event, and not in the least in either Pynchon's
fictions or his letters.  And then some ...

> Of course, the term appears in the narration rather
> than the dialogue. 

But, of course, your initial objection here was that
"that term is of a very British derivation and it is
unlikely that it would have been used in that place at
that time."  But, again, the text is in English, and,
actually, nothing needs to have been "translated"
here, though I was giving you the benefit of the doubt
on a not unreasonable (but not necessarily reasonable,
either) expectation that Pynchon would be writing with
that sort of exactitude one expects from yr better
"historical" fiction.  Except that, of course, Pynchon
isn't really writing "historical" fiction here, not in
any conventional sense.  

"Planetarium," of course, is of a very Latin
derivation and it is very unlikely that some farmstead
or whatever out even in the middle of interwar South
Africa would have a slave-powered generator with one
built into it, but ... but, again, given Pynchon's
knowledge of technological history, generally
fastidious word choice, and seeming delight in obscure
terms, am just surprised he didn't deploy "orrery"
there, is  all.  At any rate, yr better off
researching such devices under that term,
"planetarium"  these days generally connotes those
projected displays ...

And I
> certainly wasn't making up that definition of a
> planetarium as "a model of
> the solar system, sometimes mechanized to show the
> relative motions of the
> planets" [Collins]. I think, therefore, that it is
> by far a more apt term
> than "orrery" in the cultural/temporal context.

>From the ol' Merriam Webster Online Collegiate
Dictionary, http://m-w.com/

Main Entry: or·rery
Pronunciation: 'or-&r-E, 'är-
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural or·rer·ies
Etymology: Charles Boyle died 1731 4th Earl of Orrery
Date: 1713
:an apparatus showing the relative positions and
motions of bodies in the solar system by balls moved
by a clockwork

http://m-w.com/mw/art/orrery.htm
 
I wonder if "planetarium" might have been chosen for
significations brought to the fore in The Crying of
Lot 49 ... 

Main Entry: plan·e·tar·i·um
Pronunciation: "pla-n&-'ter-E-&m
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -i·ums or plan·e·tar·ia
/-E-&/
Date: 1860
1: a model or representation of the solar system
2a: an optical device for projecting various celestial
images and effects b: a building or room housing such
a projector 

That "projection" thing (sorry, no nifty illustration
here), perhaps, but ...

> As well as this, I think the symbolic significance
> of the mechanical cosmos
> introduced here by Pynchon should be factored into
> any discussion of the
> inanimate, religion, science et. al. as represented
> in this novel.

Don't disagree with you there, but I do realize you
don't read my posts all too closely, so I will note
that I have posted a few excerpts from various texts
on such matters, most recently during my hosting stint
for VV(11), under the headings "Sovereign Yo-Yo's" and
"Gyrocompass."  Of no small interest to me, though do
add in, say, "politics," "sociology," "psychology,"
"history," "medicine," "philosophy," and so forth as
well ...

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