Repost: The Big One

[Paul Mackin]

robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:
>       Paul Mackin  wrote:
>
>       Sounds like you think there might be some kind 
>       of crazy conspiracy to suppress the information.
>   

Clarification: I don't for a moment think Robin believes in a conspiracy 
to suppress info on the Pynchon family. It just kind of sounded like he did.

His questions probably aren't specifically for me but in the spirit of 
fun I'll take a stab.
> A: Ever read this Pynchin guy? Really really big on crackpot conspiracies.
> No, seriously—the fattest book of Pynchon cross references would have 
> to be on historically extant paranoid conspiracies
>   
Started reading GR the day it was published. Had a lot of free time and 
finished it quickly. Liked and admired it but didn't have an epiphany 
mainly because I was alread 47.
> B: What happened between CoL 49's short black night and the nightmare 
> that is Gravity's Rainbow? Richard Farina's Death. Now you can be
> rational, call it an obvious mis-adventure, blame it on youthful folly. . . .
>
> . . . .or you can do what Thomas Pynchon did and write Gravity's Rainbow, 
> dedicate it to Richard Farina and have numerous seances folded into the 
> plot of a book intent on a shoving a throughly revisionist history of WW 2
> down your throat in no uncertain terms, all vectors leading to sinecures
> in the CIA for ex-Nazis, all laid out explicitly in Gravity's Rainbow.
>
> Or were we reading different books? I boned up in advance by reading 
> Slaughterhouse 5 and Catch 22, what's your points of reference?
> Because, those two books are also throughly revisionist histories
> of WW 2 and of great value in their own right.
>   
Or you can do both. Or neither. Why do you ask?
> C: When were you first aware of I.G. Farben?
>   
Cary Grant asked Ingrid Bergman a somewhat similar question in 
"Notorious" (1946). "Even heard of I.G Farben?" A bunch of fugitives 
from the outfit were hanging out in Brazil. I loved the movie.

The I. G. Farben war crimes trials were pretty prominent in the news 
around that time.

Right after the war is my best answer.



> D: When were you first aware of Prescott Bush's involvement with I.G. 
> Farben? With the CIA? With Standard Oil?
>   
A few years ago a bunch of books came out on what I think you are 
referring to.

The Guardian had a long article on the various treatments.
> P: When was Pynchon first aware of I.G. Farben, and why does he 
> see a link between the dye company and the CIA and old east coast 
> money and Nazis???  ome time before writing GR.
>   
No way of knowing.
> When were you first aware of Prescott Bush's involvement with I.G. Farben?
> Or do you consider this all a load of red herrings?
>   
Mostly overblown. There's always money to be made during wars. There's 
also a lot to be lost. I don't think W's grandpa was a Nazi; his 
grandson kinda acts like one however.
>   
> Are you paranoid enough to be reading this?
>   

Definitely.
> http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/
>
> And please—don't tell me this is OTT—GRAVITY'S RAINBOW IS OTT ! ! ! ! !,
> the very definition.
>
>
>   

As Jessica Swanlake said, "I'm afraid I don't . . ."