GRGR Holocaust

[Oscar]

The second time I read GR, I learned a lot about the German internment
camps.  Jews weren't the only people held/slaughtered/worked to death.
 Gays, politicals, and others were sent to the death camps as well as
the Jewish (as an aside, I found the way they marked the prisoners
with different color triangles pretty fascinating e.g. pink triangle
for gays).  I did not learn these facts in school.  I learned this
from GR.

I don't think Pynchon takes The Holocaust head on, but he does address
the issue.  At the risk of sounding anti-semetic, I might even suggest
that Pynchon might even take a more realistic view of the situation
than most school oriented history books.

Oscar

On 10/26/05, Keith McMullen <keithsz at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> If someone who knew nothing of The Holocaust read GR, they would still
> know NOTHING of what was done to the Jews.
>
> This does not mean that the novel does not address the issue.
>
> This does not mean one is a Holocaust denier by pointing out this fact.
>
> It does raise very interesting and important questions about why
> Pynchon decided to deal with the Holocaust the way he does.
>
> If you have any doubts about the fact that Pynchon is NOT dealing
> directly with the historical information, that he is presenting it
> solely by indirect literary methods. Try and cite anything in the
> entire novel which would educate someone who found the novel on a
> desert island about anything specific about the treatment of the Jews.
>
>