Pynch-analogy (was

[jbor at bigpond.com]

I think you only need to look at those excerpts from the Katalin Orban 
book Dave Monroe has been typing up to see again just how significant 
the absence of the Holocaust from GR's narrative is to readers. Once 
you unpack the jargon the primary thing she's focussed on is the 
question of why it isn't there, or on trying to demonstrate how it is 
really there without actually being there.

But the point I was making is that interpretations of GR which don't 
acknowledge and allow for the fact that *all* readers automatically 
bring to the novel both a knowledge of the Holocaust and a strong 
emotional response to that knowledge are starting off on the wrong 
foot. And it's selling Pynchon way short to assume that he didn't 
realise and understand this about his audience and have it right there 
in view when he was constructing his narrative.

In her 1982 book Molly Hite floated the idea of "the trope of the 
unavailable insight" as one of the defining features of Pynchon's work. 
I think it's easy enough to see this trope in action in V. and Lot 49, 
where both Stencil and Oedipa are confronted and confounded by a 
(pseudo-)historical mystery, "V" and "The Trystero" respectively. In 
both those works the reader is little better off than the novels' 
protagonists, however. We're privy to a few things which Stencil 
doesn't know and never finds out in in V., but we are kept pretty much 
in the dark as Oedipa is in Lot 49.

In GR and M&D Pynchon refines this technique. In both these novels the 
"unavailable insight" is an actual historical phenomenon (i.e., the 
Holocaust and the American Civil War respectively), one which is 
"unavailable" to the characters and narrative by virtue of the temporal 
setting of the novel. The reader cannot help but bring to the text 
prior knowledge and understandably quite visceral responses to these 
momentous and terrible episodes in human history. But these things are 
nowhere present in the texts (neither the characters nor the narratives 
betray any awareness of these events as historical realities), and this 
upsets the reader's expectations and makes the experience of reading 
the text more and more unsettling. You're constantly trying to figure 
out why the Holocaust or the Civil War isn't there (or, forever trying 
to find where they've been "hidden"), why Pynchon hasn't made them his 
subject, or even glancingly recorded the fact that they did happen (as 
he does with the Holocaust in V., for example) and so they do end up 
weighing heavily on your mind as you read, perhaps more heavily than if 
they were described in graphic detail. You also find yourself 
constantly reevaluating everything which *is* in the texts -- all the 
"mindless pleasures" represented in the one, those "subjunctive Hopes" 
represented in the other, and the selfish agendas and imperialistic 
cabals represented in both -- in the light of the knowledge of and 
response to the Holocaust and the Civil War which you as a reader bring 
into the text. And I think this is where the great power and the 
resonance of these two novels lies, because then what happens is that 
you start to think more deeply about history (and ethics, amongst other 
things) in general, and also about those two events in particular.

best

On 19/06/2006:

> OK then, as the Holocaust is to GR, the American Civil War is to M&D. 
> That is, in both cases the reader has full access to historical data 
> which is immensely and absolutely relevant to the scenario Pynchon 
> depicts (WWII and the Mason-Dixon Line respectively), and about which 
> the characters in the novel, and the narrative itself, appear to have 
> no inkling. In both novels this dramatic irony creates a tension in 
> the act of reading, and incredible poignancy.
>
> It's one of the elements of Pynchon's best work, if not *the* element, 
> which makes it great.
>
>>> --- jbor at bigpond.com wrote:
>>>
>>>> I think it's safe to assume that every reader of GR will know about 
>>>> the Holocaust. What is striking, though, is its absence from 
>>>> Pynchon's narrative. But once you recognise that, at the time the 
>>>> novel is set, virtually noone knew what was happening in those 
>>>> camps, Pynchon's rationale for this becomes clear.
>>>>
>>>> For those at the time who did know something about the death camps, 
>>>> or those who might have known, like Pirate (the telepath), like 
>>>> Katje (the double or triple agent), and like Blicero (the SS 
>>>> officer), it was a prospect so terrible that they tried to suppress 
>>>> it in their minds, to the point where it only leaks through in 
>>>> dreams or neurosis.
>>>>
>>>> The few direct references we get (105, 666, 681), oblique though 
>>>> they are, are likewise fully consistent with how events played out 
>>>> at the time. And Pokler's obliviousness, until that moment when he 
>>>> walks through the gates of the Dora work camp at war's end (432-3), 
>>>> is the clincher.
>