history & fiction & Pynchon & V.

[Swing Hammerswing]

I'm only interested in your comments on the conversation
in the novel. I guess that your reading of it is may be a bit
skewed by the previous threads. Maybe not? Anyhow, just asking
a few questions here and I won't hold you to anything you say here
in this post.

>As mentioned previously, the conversation between Slab and Esther in the
>current section of _V._ foregrounds Esther's hypocrisy in using the
>Holocaust as metaphor and rhetorical weapon in order to foreclose an
>entirely unrelated and comparatively trivial argument.

This forgrounding, is this a critical term? I'm sorry, the
image I have in my mind when you use this word is of a
photograph, but is this foregrounding, as it might be in a
painting or photograph, what is nearest the POV or view or
even frame? If so, does this forgrounding have a purpose
specific to Pynchon and his contemporaries or those
contemporaies or even predecessors that employ this
technique?


The tactic is
>described by the detached narrator as "phony" (pace Holden Caulfield):
>
>        So they talked metaphysics while the afternoon waned. Neither
>     felt he was defending or trying to prove anything important. It
>     was like playing one-up at a party, or Botticelli. [...]
>        "How can you say there's a soul there? How can you tell when the
>     soul enters the flesh? Or whether you even have a soul?"
>        "It's murdering your own child is what it is."
>        "Child, schmild. A complex protein molecule, is all."
>        "I guess on the rare occasions you bathe you wouldn't mind using
>     Nazi soap made from one of those six million Jews."
>        "All right--" he was mad-- "show me the difference."
>        After that it ceased being logical and phony and became emotional
>     and phony. (354.1-14)
>
>best
>

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