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

[Paul Mackin]

On Oct 27, 2005, at 12:28 PM, pynchonoid wrote:

>
> If the War in GR is WWII and the disturbances in the
> Zone  in the period immediately following, doesn't a
> reader have to accept it as the WWII of history,
> complete with Final Solution, Holocaust, land, sea,
> and air battles, the Home Front (Allied and Axis),
> etc.? (As well as including the purely fictional and
> fantastic elements that Pynchon writes about.) Pynchon
> takes great care to create and evoke the historical
> period, and he includes enough direct references to
> the Holocaust to nail it for the reader, who can
> safely assume that the novel's settings include the
> death camps, and labor camps (if the reader want to
> make that kind of hair-splitting distinction along
> with the Nazi Final Solution categorization and naming
> fiends), the dead Jews, Rom, homosexuals, and all the
> rest.

In other words the Holocaust is background information most readers  
will have and can use  in interpreting the book.  It is important  
background information. Far more important than knowing without being  
told, for example, that Britain lies generally west of France and   
that  France lies generally west of Germany.

You are NOT implying, are you, that a book portraying the conduct of  
WW II, even in the extremely partial manner of Gravity's Rainbow,  
will be ipso facto ABOUT the Holocaust even if the latter is  
mentioned therein only in the briefest of terms?


>
> Any reader can imagine whatever she wants about GR, of
> course, free to ignore the evidence of the Holocaust
> that Pynchon includes in GR. But, why twist the text
> that way?
>
>
>
>
> http://pynchonoid.org
> "everything connects"
>
>
>
>
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