Repost: "The Big One"

[Paul Mackin]

robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:
>     
> "There's guilt to go around, but Royal Dutch Shell is not the third reich. . . ."
>
> inverts Pynchon's meaning. The author, demonstrates [in this card 
> reading] that this Nazi will pretty much rule via the "New World Order."
> Weissman will find his way to the offices of rulers in the new world.
>
> http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en-commons/thumb/f/f5/250px-Wernher_von_Braun(2).jpg
>
>           "If you're wondering where he's gone, look among the successful 
>           academics. the Presidential advisers, the token intellectuals who 
>           sit on boards of directors. He is almost surely there. Look high, 
>           not low.
>                His future card, the card of what will come, is The World."
>           GR, P764/V749/B874
>
> As far as Pynchon's concerned, Shell's just as much a Nazi as the rest of 'em.
>
>
>   
Then Pynchon's sense of moral equivalency would be out of whack.

Which was one of malignd's points.

In fairness to Pynchon, however, we should be careful not to over 
interpret  the passage.

First off, Weissmann was always more into Transcendence than into Nazi 
preoccupations with race purification and Europe domination.

Secondly, saying that former Nazis (Whom W undoubted was one of) would 
find important roles in the post-war corporate world is not necessarily 
saying that the latter is full-fledgedly Nazi.
 
Wisely or unwisely bright people of questionable backgrounds often tend 
to be allowed to float to the top.

But the "world" the new Weissmann will be at the top of (near top of) is 
the World of Business, not the old Weissmann's world of romantic dreams 
or the Holocautic World of the Nazis.

The passage is a wonderful one but we must not  forget that creative 
writers often need to make things sound more sinister than in reality 
they are.