re Re: re Re: "The Evacuation still proceeds..." GR Part 1 Section 1

[pynchonoid]

pynchonoid:
 > I'm not sure what's gained by a reader who puts
 > himself in the position of a historical personage
who,
 > in 1944, in Nazi Germany, somehow doesn't know that
 > millions of Jews and other victims are
disappearing,
 > suffering, and dying. An interesting thought
 > experiment, I guess.

Otto:
[...] But it's exactly the experiment the reader
makes. To get an idea of the 
WW2-atmosphere the reader must be aware that most of
the characters 
possibly could have no proper knowledge about the
death camps in the 
east at that time. [...] 

Interesting, as I said, but not a perspective I'll
choose to the exclusion of others when reading GR. The
novel sees the world through the eyes of people who
suffer and die and whatnot without ever knowing
they're being manipulated and through the eyes of
their manipulators and from many other narrative
viewpoints.

The novel assumes - and extrapolates beyond - a
certain body of knowledge available to readers in 1973
when it was published, including much that was
unavailable to the general reader during WWII; being
able to compare the novel to the historical record
generates a lot of the pleasure of reading GR, along
with tracing out the references and allusions to
literary and other works of art.



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