Pynchon and fascism

[Terrance]

> > >
> > > Again, What kind of fiction is the Foreword?

> 
> Even if "all writing is fiction" you still need categories  for the
> various kinds of "fiction." What kind of fiction is the forward? Is it
> prose or poetry? The answer is, it's both. It fairly prosaically
> dispenses a certain amount of information for the reader who doesn't
> know much if anything about Orwell and his book. The publishers no doubt
> insisted.  But also it is wildly unpredictable, in violation of normal
> expectations, disturbing, disorienting, replete with a certain amount of
> Pynchonean assholery--in short it is full of the poetic.  . .

Pynchon has written and published a Foreword to Orwell's novel _1984_

It is a short introductory piece to a book. It is like a Preface and an
Introduction, but one not composed by the author but by someone else. 

Is it a fiction? If all writing is fiction how can it be otherwise? 
What kind of fiction is it? Is it prose with some poetry mixed in? The
reason I'm asking these questions is not because I don't understand how
the boundary of fact and fiction may be collapsed or suspended, but
because it's a useful question to ask if we want to analyze what Pynchon
wrote.  What kind of fiction is the Foreword? Paul N. says it's not the
same as M&D, but he goes on to compare Churchill as character with
Washington as character. Is the Foreword postmodernist fiction? What?