antw. Re: Is this Book just a book? (was re: Religious Fundamentalismin Orwelland Pynchon)

[Terrance]

lorentzen-nicklaus wrote:
> 
> Terrance schrieb:
> > I've never read a convincing critical reading of GR that argues that the
> > War in SE Asia plays a role in GR. Can you point me to one or can anyone
> > point me to a few passages in the novel and explain to me how these
> > passages support such a reading.
> 
>   ach terrance, does this bring us anywhere?! wie auch immer: it has already
>   been said here that some of the war scenes read a lot more like vietnam than
>   like ww II. and last year i asked the list whether one could say that the
>   schwarzkommando from gravity's rainbow is echoing the afro-american vietnam
>   experience. the one answer i got was from paul mackin who seems to have no
>   problem with this perspective. 

Sounds real cool. I just can't think of a particular passage or episode
or character ot support this notion. For example, Enzian is surely not
an African-American soldier. I'm not sure what war scenes you're
referring to. In fact, I can't really think of any war scenes in GR (in
the sense of battles or in the sense that Otto mentioned--Dispatches). 




note also that the counterforce is, unlike in v
>   and the early stories, not simply a beatnik crew from the 1950s but a
>   metaphorical incarnation of the post 1945 countercultures in general which
>   thus includes the anti-war movement. 


That's another interesting idea. Who do you think is the best example of
q 1960s like counterculturalist or 60s-70s an ti-war movement character?
Of course the anti-war movement was not born from the conflict in SE
Asia. 


and then there's this guy asking what?

Yes. Nixon. No doubt about it. I think after reading the end of the
novel the first time I wanted to read it again because when Nixon showed
up I started thinking more about how 60s issues and ideas and culture,
like the conflict in SE Asia and  race differences  were woven into the
novel. There is a scene, can't find it at the moment, but it's really an
excellent example of how P mixes up time and space and film and paint
and his S&M themes ... , where young people are being beaten by the
police and after I read it I looked up all the historical facts that P
alludes to and it nearly undermined my evocations of American cities and
fire hoses and dogs and police and 1960's civil rights entirely. 

But when I listen to Zappa's Uncle Remus it all comes flooding back at
my nose. 





>   yet most important here is the dimension of technology: 'rocket-gnosticism' is
>   not limited to nazi germany, no, not at all ... in this context the modern war
>   never ever stops. each 'new' war is just there to bring up the current
>   technology to the next level without changing the real masters and this - not
>   so much the war profits - keeps the whole bad thing running. "nur der krieg
>   macht es möglich, die sämtlichen technischen mittel der gegenwart unter
>   wahrung der eigentumsverhältnisse zu mobilisieren" (walter benjamin: das
>   kunstwerk im zeitalter seiner technischen reproduzierbarkeit). 

Yes, the rocket descending on a Theater in America. 


as i said, you
>   won't find the word "vietnam" in gr, but then again not even you will go for
>   the thesis that the rainbow is a historistic novel about ww II, oder etwa
>   doch? perhaps it helps to think of another author for a minute: thomas mann
>   wrote, between 1926 and 1943, among other things (check out the goethe-novel
>   "lotte in weimar" from 1939, perfect in composition and incredibly funny!),
>   the novel-tetralogy "joseph und seine brüder" that deals with the biblical
>   story of joseph and his brothers; its last volume "joseph der ernährer", 1943,
>   is also - although you cannot find a direct hint - about FDR (whom thomas
>   mann met and admired) and the new deal. so great novels can be short-cuts
>   between places and times ... just remember that keith recently described here
>   how well his first gr read fitted to the tv experience of the gulf war in
>   1991. true, between the novel and our every-day-life there's no 1:1 relation,
>   and pynchon is neither a historian nor a sociologist nor a philosopher.
>   however, radical art matters, and if you just want some entertainment after
>   your ninetofive you better take the grisham ... great art, in contrary to
>   this, is always 'philosophical' which goes especially for great novels with
>   their necessarily discursive nature. where everything is bad it must be good
>   to know the worst, as an english hegelian once said. now it's your turn ---
> 
>  KFL +


Good stuff, thanks 

T