Ethical Diversions

[mikebailey at speakeasy.net]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: MalignD at aol.com [mailto:MalignD at aol.com]
> 
>  
>  <A cheap-shot argument would be to say, "Yeah, but how many Hereros are 
> running around SoCal and Manhattan Island these days?   I mean, it ain't like some 
> Herero kid became a hot-shot filmmaker and grew up to direct Schindler's 
> List.">>>
>  
>  Stated less as a cheap shot, there's probably truth to this.   For whatever 
> reason--race is an obvious one--the Herero, Cambodia, China under Mao, what's 
> going on in Africa now, pick your atrocity, don't seem to carry the same sense 
> of  immoral gravity, at least in the west, and, thus, constrain comment less.
> >>
> 

something I like to think Pynchon is doing, is extending that sense of outrage; I for one'd never heard of Sudwest till reading V, nor of Trotha.  Also, the linking of oppressor and oppressed are very clear in the Sudwest episodes, and the growth of Weissmann's character in that crucible links V. and GR.  

<rant on> Blicero's relationship with Enzian epitomizes a sick authority, not because it's homoerotic, but because there's a freezing of roles that doesn't allow constructive change, the outgrowth of the miserable sick colonial and military tradition, the type of power that corrupts until a Holocaust is conceivable...rather than diversionary, I think ethics are central in Pynchon <rant off>...

anyway, that's all been said better; the thing I wanted to say that might be a little bit new (but probably not all that new, come to think of it) is that Weissman is as close as we get to "Them" -- we can watch him grow from an idealistic young man with a copy of Rilke's poems into a near-monster with a self-mythos impervious to compassion.  
And this is what empire calls molding character and creating new leaders! ("Look high, not low")  Weissmann's worrisome continuity says "it didn't end when we liberated Dachau."
Whereas in Vineland, there's nobody as unattractive as Weissman.  And Brock Vond gets to join the Thanatoids, which is a good place for him.