V-2nd Dopplegangers

[David Payne]

Well I re-read that Pynchon letter, and I think, as Mark and alice suggested, that I got his point about Vietnam wrong. 

Pynchon says that when he was writing in V about the Sudwest stuff he "was thinking of the 1904 campaign as a sort of dress rehearsal for what happened to the Jews in the '30's and '40's'". OK, well I got that point. 

But what I think I got wrong was, Pynchon didn't draw the connection between the Sudwest material and Vietnam until after he wrote V (but while he was writing GR). At least that's how I read his letter.

Agreeing nonetheless with Joseph: Pynchon's novels aren't an essay about how 1904 SW Africa is like Vietnam or Nazism or whatever. It's more like Mark said, that Pynchon's fiction reflects his sense (or fear or vision) of an underlying pattern.

And thinking of the beauty of the individual and the beauty of entire 
cultures, I think that Pynchon's novels make broad swaths against some cultures for 
exterminating other cultures, and I think he raises some individuals 
against the broad pattern. And I just saw a mouse scurry across my alley in the street light.

alice, I hope your son returns home safely. May peace be had. Since you mentioned O'Brien and children and since I just reiterated that a novel's not an essay: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2009/09/telling-tails/7533/

Thanks, and well done, for hosting this chapter, Joseph.