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

[Terrance]

Paul Mackin wrote:


> Looking at it from a slightly different angle, can anyone imagine
> Pynchon writing a novel that was expressly about the Vietnam war. It
> seems to me it would be a terribly uninspiring thing to surround a novel
> the scope of GR with. The war was such a disaster from start to finish.
> What much more can be said than that is should never have happened. And
> Vietnam was such a pale reflection of WWII. This is not to imply that
> the suffering caused by it was less horrendous. But there were no great
> forces pitted against each other. There was no suspense about the
> outcome. The outcome didn't matter even though it was an ignoble defeat
> of the U.S. It was said long before the end that the U.S. should just
> declare victory and go home.  Let's face it, the protest movement
> against the war was more interesting than the war itself. Perhaps the
> protest is what some p-listers have seen in GR rather than the war
> itself.

Yeah. And P's protest was grand. I think P way of looking at it "
archetypical [sic] of every clash between the west and non-west, clashes
that are still going on right now in South East Asia" is kinda silly but
this silly view has been the force behind three great novels--V., GR,
M&D.

Thanks Paul, real good stuff.