Pynchon and fascism

Thu May 29 14:05:24 CDT 2003

On Thu, 2003-05-29 at 12:34, Paul Nightingale wrote:
> I can't remember where it was, although I'm pretty sure it was during
> the current discussion, to the effect that the Holocaust doesn't feature
> in either text. I don't think I'm mistaken, but of course, if I have
> misrepresented the p-list, I apologise profusely.

That was me. I was describing what I thought was the most interesting
thing in the essay on my first (incomplete) read through. Here is an
excerpt.

On Thu, 2003-04-24 at 07:16, Dave Monroe wrote: (quoting P)
> >
> > . . . .  There is some felt reticence, as if,
> > > with so many other deep issues to worry about, Orwell
> > > would have preferred that the world not be presented
> > > the added inconvenience of having to think much about
> > > the Holocaust.  The novel may even have been his way
> > > of redefining a world in which the Holocaust did not
> > > happen.

I replied:
> >
> > This passage is of interest because we can't help but think the same
> > observation might be applied to Gravity's Rainbow. If the Holocaust had
> > been given any more than minimal attention in GR, could other themes of
> > the book have been developed with the same force? The Holocaust made WW
> > II more than just your average run of the mill Imperialistic or even
> > defensive war.  It would serve Pynchon's purpose to portray WW II as
> > pretty much a re-enactment of WW I. The Holocaust throws this line of
> > thinking into a tizzy.  The  omission in both books was the taking of a
> > necessary literary license.
> >
> >
> > Of course we've discussed this question before, but it's interesting to
> > receive commentary on it from Pynchon's pen.
> >
> >
> >P.

Then a few days later I wrote the following in reply to Mutualcode's post (see below)

Some interesting possibilities  being discussed here. Psychological ones
we might call them, or at least some of them. There may however have
been artistic considerations merging into practical publishing
considerations that swamp all else. I'm not trying to interpret
Pynchon's words here but exploring my own reasoning on the question of
1984 and antisemitism. It was P who brings up the topic of the camps and
the Holocaust. (I make the Holocaust secondary to antisemitism in
general, but inextricably involved in Orwell's plan.) Anyway, my
thinking would go as follows: If Orwell wished to write a book about the
threat of totalitarianism/nationalism, antisemitism/racism was a topic
it might have been reasonable to expect him to take up. This would not 
have been an impossible task. I do think it would have been difficult
however and perhaps undesirable. A problem was that at this point in
history the  aspect of antisemitism/reacism that was for obvious reasons
on the way to becoming (though not quite there yet) uppermost in the
reading public's mind was the Holocaust. But the Holocaust was
definitely a specific Nazi atrocity, not a generic totalitarian one. It
seems to me that major emphasis on antisemitism and inevitably on some
Holocaust-like event could well have caused Orwell's anti-totalitarian
book to end up seeming too much like an anti-Nazi book, which might have
assured it a why-don't-you-tell-me-something-I-don't-know response from
readers in 1948. The time in history was special. WW II being so
recently over, the enormity of the threat Nazism had been, and the cost
in lives and general suffering needed to defeat it, was still at the
forefront of public  consciousness. It's hard to imagine at the present
the degree of hostility felt against the Nazis (and remember many still
had only casual knowledge of the camps). So, ironically, an anti-Nazi
seeming book would NOT have been a very salable right then because it
would have been too much like beating the proverbial dead horse. To
Britain (and the Allies) Nazism was an already-recognized threat that
had for the moment anyway been soundly defeated. To Orwell it was
Stalinism that was to a large degree the UNrecognized threat. The
Holocaust (again, ironic as it is) would have been a distraction from
the purposes of the book and could well have produced a less than
enthusiastic reception.

 To expand (and possibly equivocate) on the above a little it may be
hard for people who weren't around in 1948 to realize but to the general
public of America (also Britain even more so I would guess) the Nazi
extermination camps (in spite of the fact that they were fairly widely
known about) were NOT at that time what the Nazis were mainly hated for,
or that WW II was remembered for. Rather it was the blood, sweat, tears,
and loss of life required to defeat that very formidable enemy. It took
many years for the general view of the period to shift appreciably. By
1960 there had been considerable shift.  

So, a complex of factors (cited by several p-listers) account for 1984
ending up the book it was. Above all I would emphasize that Orwell had a
perfect right to imagine his own imaginary world of Big Brother. And of
course Pynchon would agree. It's a heck of a good book.

P.

On Sun, 2003-04-27 at 10:29, Mutualcode@[omitted] wrote: 
> In a message dated 4/26/2003 11:33:15 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> jbor@[omitted] writes:
> 
> 
> > _1984_ was published in 1948. In the excerpt from the Foreword cited
> > above
> > Pynchon is saying that the "evidence" from Orwell's writings from
> > this time
> > (1945 and after I'm assuming) "indicates either a sort of numbness
> > before
> > the enormity of what had happened in the camps or a failure at some
> > level to
> > appreciate its full significance", and an ensuing "felt reticence"
> > (less
> > "naivety" than a feeling of horror, and sensitivity and respect for
> > the
> > victims, is Pynchon's point here I think) to address the Holocaust.
> > Surely
> > this implies that Orwell knew about what had happened, or that
> > Pynchon is
> > assuming he did, doesn't it? As Otto said, after the liberation of
> > the camps
> > at war's end, the enormity of the Holocaust was revealed pretty
> > quickly.
> > 
> 
> 
> Pynchon's suggesting that the absence of The Holocaust in"1984"
> might be either due to "numbness," or, to "a failure at some level to 
> appreciate its full significance," indicates to me that he prefers to
> leave the question of absence open. I think any "felt reticience"
> would have easily been cast aside by Orwell if he believed, at the 
> time, that such large scale state sponsored anti-semitism was more
> than a horrible aberration, rather than a danger equivalent to that
> of nationalism, for causing problems in the future. In that sense I
> think Pynchon is suggesting Orwell's naivety.
> 
> Either way, I see a big difference between the absence of The
> Holocaust in "1984" and in GR, in terms of authorial intention.
> Whether, as you initially suggested, Orwell- the man- is similar
> to certain characters in the novel GR, is an interesting speculation
> I'll have to think about.
> 
> respectfully

> 
> As to your parting question/jibe, I've no interest, as I've stated on
> several occasions, in playing p-list shark-games, so please don't expect
> me to comment further. If you care to read White's essay, "The Modernist
> Event" in Figural Realism (1999) you might achieve enlightenment on that
> score.
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: David Morris [mailto:fqmorris at yahoo.com]
> > Sent: 29 May 2003 16:51
> > To: Paul Nightingale; 'Paul Mackin'; pynchon-l at waste.org
> > Subject: Re: Pynchon and fascism
> > 
> > 
> > --- Paul Nightingale <isread at btopenworld.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Coincidentally I've just been reading essays by Hayden White who
> > describes
> > what he calls "figural realism", in short, the way in which history
> > writing
> > turns 'the past' into narrative (or fiction). At one point he refers
> to
> > the
> > Holocaust as the "paradigmatic modernist event in Western European
> > history"
> > because the scale of it all means it cannot be adequately described or
> > represented ... which I suppose might be interesting, given what has
> been
> > said,
> > on the p-list, about the Holocaust in 1984 and GR.
> > 
> > Can you help us out by quoting or linking to the archives "what has
> been
> > said,
> > on the p-list, about the Holocaust in 1984 and GR?"  I don't remember
> 1984
> > being discussed here before P's new intro.  Was he the scholar Doug
> tried
> > to
> > enlist to verify his charge that certain P-listers were Holocaust
> Deniers?
> > 
> > David Morris
> > 
> > 
> > __________________________________
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
> > http://calendar.yahoo.com
> 
> 