Vietnam World War II Gravity's Rainbow

[Paul Mackin]

On Oct 20, 2006, at 3:51 AM, John Carvill wrote:

> Good question. I'm sure it's been covered in the archives. I  
> suppose you might get some answers if you went through the book  
> keeping that angle in mind. Trouble is, there are so many angles  
> you could try to keep in mind. No doubt at all, Pynchon's thoughts  
> on Vietnam must've informed his handling of WWII, but specific  
> references are, as far as I'm aware, still fairly obscure (if there  
> at all). Wonder if there's been an article in Pynchon Notes about  
> this?

Yeah, I think that angle has come up here from time to time, arising  
mainly from the move at the end of  the novel to bring the story up  
to date so to speak--because the overhang of "the Vietnam War" was  
still very much with us in 1973, although it's quite a stretch to  
think an author would use a momentously Big War as a stand in for a  
much littler one, regardless of how wrong and unjustified the later  
had been,  because that's not the way  metaphor ordinarily works.

Why would it be necessary to go to all that trouble to comment on  
something that was already so discredited

Will anyone ever need  to comment on the Iraq War? Only if  
desperately in need of a topic.

Stephen Colbert hardly needs to,

But I'm probably wrong.

P.
>
> One example. At the start, in the banana breakfast sequence, Pirate  
> enters his jungle-like bananery, and he clears his mind, "an old  
> commando trick"; this vaguely calls to mind Vietnam for me.


>
>
>
> <<In the Mind of P Documentary, much is mentioned often of this  
> World War II
> as Vietnam and the the US as the aggressors just like Germany was  
> during
> world war 2. I could see Gravitys Rainbow as an oblique reaction to  
> Vietnam,
> but I see not direct correlation or reference. What are your  
> thought s on
> this?>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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