GR P1 S1: "The Evacuation still proceeds..."

[Paul Mackin]

On Oct 26, 2005, at 5:12 AM, John Carvill wrote:
> rainbows, etc.
>
> Another: the question of how many alternative meanings to ascribe  
> to 'evacuation'. *Is* it Pynchon's intention to load that word with  
> multiple meanings here? How can we ever know this?  It didn't occur  
> to me personally to think of evacuation in the bowel-emptying  
> sense, but as soon as it was mentioned I couldn't help thinking of  
> the piece of 'theatre' surrounding Katje's evacuation of her bowels  
> for Pudding's dinner.

In Pynchon, anything goes.

Of course the word itself has both positive and negative  
connotations. There were the London evacuations of children, mothers  
with small children, the elderly and infirm  to the relative safety  
of the countryside   But "evacuation'" (German equivalent) was also  
used in the Wannsee protocol--evacuation of the Jews to the East. The  
events  in Pirate's dream are purely negative --no one is saved--and  
not directly related to a specific historic event, though the place  
seems to  be  wartime London. Rather this dreamt of evacuation is a  
sweeping transport of the literary entity which will became well  
known in later pages of the book as the Preterite to their doom and  
damnation.

I have no doubt that readers back in '73 couldn't help  but think of  
the of the Jews. At the same time it must be noted that historically  
those charged with obtaining an Allied military victory--as  
represented  by Prirate and his employer--would not and could not  
have had the plight of Jews, even if it had been more fully  
understood, on the front burner of  their consciousness. If Pirate in  
fact was channelling the situation East, it would have been an  
extracurricular activity. not one sanctioned by the Firm.

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