175s

[jbor]

----------
>From: "Otto" <o.sell at telda.net>
>

> Yes, d'accord, on the level of real history in real Germany the argument of
> the "straight" goes that it was their own "fault" being gay and therefor
> sent to the camp. Really disgusting.
> It's only the imagination of that "straight" oriented, male dominated
> society that thinks of a "Homo-Eden" in a prison or camp and thus the
> realease imagining as a banishment. Pynchon is deeply ironical here.

I don't think that Pynchon ever suggests that Dora was a "Homo-Eden", and
that's not the irony at all. The fact that the 175s are homesick for Dora is
an indictment of the society they have been "liberated" into, not a signal
that the camp was some sort of gay resort!

Another facetious note is struck when the narrator comments: "Ordinarily,
this would be Thanatz's notion of paradise, except ... " (665.5 up) Thanatz,
of course, is homosexual (perhaps not exclusively, but that is his obvious
sexual preference), and so of course an exclusively male homosexual
community should be a place he would enjoy being in. However, the mentions
of Dora and Blicero thoroughly spook him, and this affects his reaction to
what the 175 tells him.

The Läufer is like the group's shaman, passing "messages ... between the
visible Lager and the invisible SS." (666) The visible Lager is the
community the 175s have set up, the invisible SS are the "*mean ass*
imaginary Nazi playmates", a Pantheon of spiritual leaders with Blicero as
the top god. I would imagine that the 175s felt terribly abandoned and
betrayed by traditional religion (and particularly by the Catholic Church!),
so I'd be surprised if any sort of Catholic orthodoxy was being alluded to
here. And, at the end of the sequence, Thanatz himself becomes the Läufer.

Some of the description of the 175s' camp is coloured by Thanatz's own fears
and neuroses (cf. the observations about Blicero at 666.15-20: check out the
rhetorical question and use of second person address which rounds out that
paragraph. These provide a signal to the reader that the narrative here is
being filtered through Thanatz). But Thanatz's pov is interweaved with more
straightforward description of the chain of command, and by direct reportage
from the "town spokesman" Thanatz ran into back at 665.30. In fact, that's
pretty much all the sequence is, a conversation between this shadowy
"charcoal-colored" spokesman and Thanatz.

best