re Amerikaka (NP?)

[MalignD at aol.com]

I wrote:

<<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."

Scuffling:

<>

"Sarcasm" (would say "irony") intentended.  Without which it would read "is 
not very relevant ..." etc.  

<<Are you suggesting that people like Pokler don't exist?>>

I'm not suggesting people like Pokler don't exist; I'm saying Pokler doesn't 
exist/never existed.  How can I rationally speak to whether there are people 
like him?  In what way? 

<<The "twenty-five years earlier" phrase; what are we to make of that, other 
than suggestive of the irrelevance of history?>>

Pokler never existed.  He's not part of "history."  

More generally, there are people on this list who feel certain they know how 
Pynchon feels about the war in Afghanistan based on his fiction.  I think 
this absurd.  I might think it less so, had he written a book about Afghanis 
or about terrorism, as did, say, DeLillo.  But Pokler is a character in a 
book written thirty years ago, imagined to have lived fifty-five years ago in 
Germany (which is to say he's not an Afghani).  So yes, I find the reference 
irrelevant and silly as I find, for the most part, the entire "What does 
Pynchon think? discussion.

<< 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.>>

Intellectually dishonest?  You're making a rather large issue of this, don't 
you think?