re Amerikaka (NP?)

[barbara100 at jps.net]

Henry, 
I've come to the conclusion this is just a sorry attempt to dehumanize or marginalize what's painful for them to realize.  Pokler, he doesn't matter, he's only a figment of Pynchon's imagination.  The past, it doesn't matter, it's the past. Barbara, she doesn't matter, she's just Doug.  Bombing Afghanistan, that doesn't matter, they're just 'evil' terrorists.
The Doug and Barbara business I can understand (however absurd).  Even the bombing I can understand (however cruel and barberic).  But  Pokler?  How could they dehumanize Pokler?  What the fuck are they even doing here if they can't see Pokler as representative of something important? Doesn't the address read Pynchon-L?  Astonishing!
Barbara





Original Message:
-----------------
From: Henry Musikar scuffling at hotmail.com
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 12:00:32 -0400
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: re Amerikaka (NP?)


MD -

You wrote the following:

"And this is especially relevant to the goings-on in Afghanistan, since it
happened to a made-up German in a thirty-year-old novel, set some
twenty-five years earlier."

I can not parse the above in any way but as a sarcasm that suggests that
Pokler is NOT relevant because "it happened to a made-up German"
"twenty-five years earlier." Unless you are suggesting that the operative
word here "German," then it looks like "made up," i.e. fiction, makes
something irrelevant. Are you suggesting that people like Pokler don't
exist?

The "twenty-five years earlier" phrase; what are we to make of that, other
than suggestive of the irrelevance of history? I can argue in favor of the
irrelevance of history, suggesting that history is events, i.e. particles
and not waves, but I don't think that that was what you were saying. Or was
it? If not, then your message just seems to me to be part of the jump on the
Barbie thread and simply argumentative and perhaps intellectually dishonest.



----- Original Message -----
From: <MalignD at aol.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2001 11:34 AM
Subject: Re: re Amerikaka (NP?)


> <<It seems that we are destined to clash, you and I, not so much over
means
> and ends, but rather over knowledge itself.>>
>
> I'm not sure destiny plays a part.
>
> <<Either everything is connected, and therefore relevant, to various
degrees,
> or nothing is ...>>
>
> This seems a false and forced choice.  "Some things are connected and some
> things are not"  describes the world as I experience it.
>
> <<If fiction makes sense, then why can't it be relevant?>>
>
> I didn't say fiction couldn't be relevant; I said that the relevance of
the
> cite in the particular instance was not.
>
> <<If the past can't be relevant, then what can be?>>
>
> Pokler is a made-up character; he never existed;  he isn't part of the
"past"
> as I trust you intend the word to be understood.
>

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