Ethical Diversions

[jbor at bigpond.com]

Mal's point about Pynchon not depicting the Holocaust because he had no 
direct experience of it (that "power of taboo" mentioned by the 
reviewer of the new Arditti book) is very probably something Pynchon 
needed to consider when composing GR. But I think there would have been 
an even greater problem if he had published in 1973 a novel about WWII 
set in Germany and the occupied territories in 1944-5 which completely 
ignored that the Holocaust happened. (And I guess this was why Heller 
felt he had to justify why he decided to do this in Catch-22.)

So, the Holocaust is something which is occurring offstage in GR, and 
it's never foregrounded explicitly precisely because the vast majority 
of characters and narrative vantages wouldn't have known anything about 
it. For example, Slothrop doesn't know why the child's doll has the 
hair of a Russian Jewess (nor either, in all probability, does the 
little girl). The reason for it isn't mentioned in the narrative 
(281-3). But the reader will fill in those details from the knowledge 
which they bring to the text.

The thought-provoking one for me was the description of how Katje's 
"record with Mussert's people is faultless" (97), and that she was 
responsible for the "three Jewish families sent east" (105), which was 
the investment of "time and lives" the Dutch Resistance had put into 
her work as a double agent. The comment in the narrative that "Jews are 
negotiable", as negotiable as "cigarettes, cunt, or Hershey bars" (105) 
is chilling, and it's an accusation which is being levelled against the 
Resistance in that particular instance. It's an extremely provocative 
example, and it's something which goes right to the heart of the 
"ethics" question.

I agree that the other uses of the noun "holocaust" (small "h") in the 
novel carry with them a reminder for the reader of the Holocaust 
(capital "H"). It will always be a loaded word for us. But it wasn't a 
loaded word at the time when the events being described in the novel 
were happening, and so in terms of the narrative (i.e., the story) and 
the characters the use of the word has nothing whatsoever to do with 
Nazi genocide. It's in that way (along with all those loaded 
associations and images of smoke, soap, gas, the Oven Game etc) that 
the tension I mentioned is created and sustained in the text for the 
reader.

best

On 20/06/2006:

> Also p. 282, the burning human hair of the doll in that haunting 
> opening to the Third Section of the novel; and a future tense 
> reference to "[e]xtermination camps" become "tourist attractions" (p. 
> 453), which recalls those "gullible visitors" who "Micro" Graham picks 
> out from among tour groups in the Mittelwerke to take through to the 
> Dora labour camp (p. 296).
>
> On 16/06/2006:
>
>> 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.
>