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

[jbor]

    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)

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>From: Dave Monroe <davidmmonroe at yahoo.com>
>

snip
> Okay, so were both in agreement that those "sames"
> there are potentially, at least, problematic.

Well, no, I was referring to the earlier paragraph where Pynchon implies
that, by 1969, and certainly in respect to _GR_, he had come "to feel the
thing goes much deeper" than any simplistic and snug link between the two
events, the decimation of the Herero in 1904-7 and the Shoah.

> 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").

Interesting tactic. No, I think Pynchon is exemplifying the supremacist
attitudes and behaviours of Christian imperialists towards non-Christian
peoples in two other instances. The repercussions in both examples were/are
familiar enough to go without saying.

> One might here, however, differentiate to some extent
> between colonial (European/American on Africa, Asian,
> Native American) violence and European-on-European
> violence here.

"One" might; though Pynchon doesn't seem to be making any such distinctions.

> 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
snip

The reading you presume I'll be "provisionally satisfied" with has very
little relation to what Pynchon is writing in the letter, as far as I can
see. I'm satisfied that this is perhaps your opinion, but that doesn't also
make it Pynchon's.

best