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

[Terrance]

> 
> 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.

If one argues that the near absence of the Holocaust from GR is proof
that Pynchon deliberately avoided the subject because he believed "such
subjects" (i.e., genocide of the Herero) should be handled with care,
history and documentary probably being the best way, one would need
explain the apparent change in Pynchon's attitude after V. and CL49. In
the novel V. the Herero genocide is deliberately handled with out care.
Moreover, history and documentary (although several books have been
published in the last 20 years) ignored or white-washed the Herero
story. One problem Pynchon, as novelist not historian, deals with a kind
of poetic judiciousness  (he acknowledges the problem for Historians in
the Letter to Hirsch. As Monroe and others have pointed out, the best
evidence we have is P's Letter to Thomas F. Hirsch, 8 January 1969.