GR, V2, slave labor

[pynchonoid]

jporter:
[...]But the center of GR is
"a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."
The rocket, like everyone and everything else in
the novel's thrall, is in orbit around that central
enigma. Is the Holocaust at the center? I don't think
so, but what might be, is the motivation for
committing
the crime of the Holocaust, as well as, the motivation
for resisting, and all motivation for that
matter.[...]

Can't disagree with that.   I'd shave it a bit finer,
and focus on the motivation to conquer and manipulate
Nature, which gives us both the Rocket -- and the rest
of the goods flowing from the Enlightenment, Science,
Industry -- and the death camps and nuclear weapons
and the holocaust our military leaders are planning,
as Pynchon sums it up quite nicely in the Luddite
essay.

"By 1945, the factory system -- which, more than any
piece of machinery, was the real and major result of
the Industrial Revolution -- had been extended to
include the Manhattan Project, the German long-range
rocket program and the death camps, such as Auschwitz.
It has taken no major gift of prophecy to see how
these three curves of development might plausibly
converge, and before too long. Since Hiroshima, we
have watched nuclear weapons multiply out of control,
and delivery systems acquire, for global purposes,
unlimited range and accuracy. An unblinking acceptance
of a holocaust running to seven- and eight-figure body
counts has become -- among those who, particularly
since 1980, have been guiding our military policies --
conventional wisdom."
- Is it O.K. to be a Luddite?
The New York Times Book Review
28 October 1984, pp. 1, 40-41.
http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_luddite.html


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