V-2 -Chapter 9 - Anti-Oedipus

[rich]

I wonder if we are treading on thin ice here when we extrapolate
Pynchon's artistic license in shadowing the Herero genocide with the
Nazi genocide of Jews, Roma. It almost implies an inherent
predilection in the German character for mass extermination (or
eliminationist in the current use of the word). What I mean to say is
that such a shadowing is perfectly legitimate in a work of art--it
suggests but when we bring that from the novel into the real world I
think we may want to pause and think a bit because I for one do not
believe that one can blankly connect von Trotha and Himmler for
example, that Hitler was inevitable. As we all know American
(Philippines), British (Kenya, The Boer War), Belgian (Congo), etc.
colonial enterprises were just as horrific. The Germans surely did not
have a monopoly on such behavior.

maybe I'm just being picayune

rich

On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 11:15 AM, Robin Landseadel
<robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
> I'm seeing Foppl being the
> Abraham of this story, the "Father" of his tribe, the leader among those who
> would make a living out of mass extermination. So Foppl's "Sarah" is the
> Mother of this long line of victims, these pre-echos of Auschwitz and the
> first explorers into the wilderness, these out of town try-outs for mass
> exterminations to come. There is no doubt concerning the despotic nature of
> Foppl in these scenes.
>