Pynchon, Coetzee, "the Holocaust as metaphor" and more

[Malignd]

A few random ideas on fiction, reality,
interpretation, Pynchon, GR, the Holocaust, drawn from
reading a review (by a novelist) of a metafictional
novel, in which nonfictional ideas and people comingle
with fictional ones and ... well, etc.

In a review of J.M. Coetzee's novel, Elizabeth
Costello, apparently a curious hybrid of the factual
and fictional, David Lodge, the reviewer, describes an
incident wherein Costello, in a lecture, compares the
meat industry to the Jewish extermination by the
Nazis.  She says, "we are surrounded by an enterprise
of degradation, cruelty and killing which rivals
anything that the Third Reich was capable of, indeed
dwarfs it, in that ours is an enterprise without end
... ."  

Another character, a Jewish poet name Abraham Stern,
protests, writing, "if Jews were treated like cattle,
it does not follow that cattle are treated like Jews. 
The inversion insults the memory of the dead.  It also
trades on the horrors of the camps in a cheap way."

All of which reminded me of a discussion on this list
wherein it was argued by some that the extermination
of the dodoes in GR was meant as a metaphor for the
Holocaust, an idea that was counter-argued by some,
who found the suggestion offensive for much the same
reason offered above (as was the entire concept of
"Holocaust as metaphor found by some offensive). 
Whether the offense, if one felt an offense, was TP's
as well was not an answerable question, making the
argument only trickier.

There is a further description in the review of
another incident, wherein Costello (fictionally)
confronts Paul West, the (actual) author of a novel
entitled The Very Rich Hours of Count von
Stauffenberg, within which (West's novel) the torture
of men involved in a plot to murder Hitler is luridly
exaggerated, something Costello finds obscene.

Lodge, curious, read West's novel and found himself in
agreement with Costello (perhaps with, perhaps not
with Coetzee) and wrote, "such subjects should
certainly be handled with care--history and
documentary probably being the best way ..."

Again, against the argument that the Holocaust was the
central metaphor of GR, others argued that the
Holocaust was almost entirely absent from GR, likely,
at least in part, for the above reason.  

Back to Coetzee:  

Further complicating things, Elizabeth Costello (the
novel) is itself apparently an unusual mix of the real
and fictional; part of it was originally delivered as
lectures by Coetzee at Princeton, the Tanner Lectures,
entitled "The Lives of Animals."  These were in part
criticized because, Lodge writes, "there was a feeling
... that he was putting forward an extreme,
intolerant, and accusatory argument without taking
full intellectual responsibility for it."

And this reminded me of the discussion here about TP's
Orwell Introduction, that, if he was speaking
specifically of September 11 and George W. Bush's
policies, as was claimed, why was his argument so
allusive?

(I trust the reader has enjoyed this note.) 




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