Pynchon as propaganda

[Paul Mackin]

On Wed, 2003-04-02 at 22:40, Mutualcode at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 4/2/2003 5:30:14 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> jbor at bigpond.com writes:
> 
> 
> > I interpret this passage as a poignant representation of the
> > futility of war
> > (and, more overtly, of the futility of religious faith), and of the
> > enormous
> > loss of lives during WWII specifically, rather than a criticism of
> > either
> > the doomed soldiers for holding to their faith before going into
> > battle or
> > even of the actions of the "army chaplains" doing the preaching.
> > 
> 
> 
> Probably not. When GR came out in '73, Saigon had yet to fall, and
> while
> GR was ostensibly about WWII, it couldn't help but be read through the
> lens
> of Viet Nam. My Lai had been publicized by Seymour Hersh, Fitzgerald
> had
> published "Fire in the Lake..." and Nixon's fall lay in the future. I
> think the
> tone of the passage very much reflects on what, by that time, had come
> to
> seem as an immoral war, and that the narrative voice is sounding an
> authentic
> sense of amazement at how far America had fallen into depravity by the
> time of the Vietnamese fiasco and the publication of GR:
> 
>        Clergymen, working for the army, stood up and talked 
>        to the men who were going to die about God, death, 
>        nothingness, redemption, salvation. It really happened.
>        It was quite common...(GR, 693)
> 
> The moral argument for the war in Vietnam had been totally discredited
> by the time of GR's publication, while WW II was, and always will
> remain, 
> the great moral crusade of the 20th century, inspite of our
> recognition-
> with Pynchon's help- of it's darker economic underside.


The tone I hear in the passage is one of sympathy and fellow feeling for
those who face death in war. War itself is not on trial here.The time
for questions as to the futility of war or the justice of war are in the
past. We are viewing (reminiscing) the scene from a point at which war
and all the atrocities that inevitably flow from war have long since
become a given. The question now is surviving the war. Surviving it
either in the sense of surviving it alive, or very possibly "surviving"
it dead. Either is a difficult burden. Religion may ease this burden for
some. A key phrase in the passage is "[h]olding on to what they could."

P.