"The Evacuation still proceeds..." GR Part 1 Section 1

[Paul Mackin]

On Oct 30, 2005, at 10:00 PM, Tim Strzechowski wrote:

> So it is *reasonable* to infer that a reference to a Nazi labor  
> camp in, say, 1944-45, could potentially carry connotations of a  
> Nazi death camp because of the "double purpose" for which they were  
> used?

It seems so to me.

However the novel is NOT about the Holocaust just because of a few  
references to it. Among other reasons for avoiding it Pynchon knew it  
was not his subject. How long does anyone think he could sustain the  
seriousness and horror without cracking a joke? Pynchon tends and  
needs to  write in a comic mode. This doesn't mean the comic is  
never  serious (or the serious comic).



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>> Perhaps I haven't paid enough attention to know what the dispute  
>> is  about but everyone knows, don't they, that the labor camps  
>> were part  of the Final Solution too. It was just that they had a  
>> double  purpose. Manpower was in short supply. After '42 the same  
>> roundups of  Jews provided victims for the labor camps  as for the  
>> death camps.   The scheme was that able bodied men went one way;   
>> children, pregnant  women, the infirm went the other. No one was  
>> meant to survive for  very long.
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