M&D article

[Terrance]

> The critic here is a bright boy, though a bit superficial. It is
> false that the rifles in M&D are all "sterloops", as I have already
> proved. Nobody can deny though that the rifles are very important,
> and that through the symbol of the inverted star P. manages to
> connect, thanks to his unstable textual artifact, English colonialism
> in America and Dutch colonialism in S Africa. Ad for the hint at
> Auschwitz, not bad, though it should be remembered that P. doesn't
> believe that the extemination of the Jews in W.W.2, horrible and
> barely fathomable as it is, is an "unicum", that is an exceptional
> event; he has been telling us, since V., that the Jewish genocide is
> one of--unfortunately--many modern, scientific genocides, starting
> from the extermination of the Hereros and continuing with the tragic
> facts of Rwanda (has anybody heard of Samantha Powers' book on the
> history of genocide?).

>From V. to M&D, Pynchon is focused on what he calls "THE GERMAN
SICKNESS" --GR  and how it infected the world (his greatest concern is
the symptoms that are so obviously manifest in the All Powerful American
Body Politic--Vinaland).  Pynchon begins with the Germans --V.  because
the Germans committed the greatest crime against humanity,   the
Holocaust, with The Rocket (GR's Capital R THE rocket, not
rockets)--GR.  


"History has brought Mankind to that pinnacle on which the total
obliteration of Mankind is at last a practical possibility. At this
moment in History the friends of the Life Instinct must warn that the
victory of Death is by no means impossible; the malignant Death Instinct
can unleash those hydrogen bombs." 

Of course, a Rocket Scientist might argue that the total obliteration of
Mankind is only a Spiritual Transformation. 

But you don't believe in The Resurrection of the Body? Do you, Old
Fellow? 

There is No Way Out!