1984 Foreword "redefining a world in which the Holocaust did not happen"

[Mutualcode at aol.com]

In a message dated 4/28/2003 4:30:30 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
jbor at bigpond.com writes:


> I commented that the range of
> speculations and justifications Pynchon offers about why Orwell, who did
> know what happened in the death camps (according to what Pynchon writes in
> the Foreword), largely avoided the Holocaust and "Jewish matters" in his
> non-fiction writings and the novel confirm the way Pynchon has represented
> some of the characters in _GR_ not wanting to think about the Holocaust

I think it is much more interesting to compare the motivations of
the two authors rather than Orwell with fictional characters in GR.
Pynchon's reasons for not dwelling on the details of The Holocaust
seem to be the inverse of Orwell's avoidance of It. Both authors
(if we are to give credence to Pynchon's speculations about Orwell's
frame of mind) seem to have based their decisions on audience
impact, decided not to highlight The Holocaust in the novels, but
to nearly opposite effect.

On the other hand, as I've mentioned here before, Pynchon's
decision not to give the holocaust of HIV/AID's one sentence in 
VL is an avoidance of a very important issue which he must
have certainly made consciously, and perhaps for some of the 
same rationalizations he offers up to explain Orwell's avoidance of
The Holocaust.

respectfully
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20030428/1d6566cb/attachment.html>