BtZ42 this section

[Smoke Teff]

The use of the oven is an essential axis between A) our understanding of the mass murder (and crematory disposal) of Jews as a tangible, industrial solution to (what the Nazis saw partly as) a problem of logistics, and B) our (and Pynchon's) identification of the fact that the BusinessMind of the Nazis tells only a small fraction of the story. The influence of mythologies, of mythological thinking, of fairy tales, of magic, of the persistent a-rational understanding of one's life that helps to create a bureaucratic system of death and disposal just as much as the BusinessMind does. Magical thinking isn't just for liberal paranoid romantics. We all do it. 

> On Jun 20, 2016, at 12:45 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> 
> It may be true that perceptions of east and west  differed but Pynchon is writing in English and knows his primary audience will make these connections between the image of ovens and fire and the holocaust. 
> 
> Elie Wiesel’s current politics may be distorted by the identity politics of the Israeli Right and his own horrific experience . The holocaust plays heavily into Israeli politics. But there is a long history of Jewish dissent against the mistreatment of Palestinians. I am refering to Wiesel because his writing was crucial to the western understading of the Holocaust. Night was published in French in 1958 and English in 1960. 
> 
> To my mind the question under discussion is about why a series of ovens and fires, one inside the other, is central to the imagery of this chapter. It is impossible for me to imagine P ( the master of layered hypertext) writing this chapter with these images without being fully conscious and intentional in attempting to summon the holocaust in a loaded mythic form to focus on the  psychological implication, the inner dimensions of a culture gone mad with delusions of supremacy.  In many ways he is broadening the psychological dimensions of that Nazi history to include the history of colonialism, collaboration and human war on everything from Hereroes to Dodos. 
> 
> There is an inclination by some to make Fascist  concentration camps unique in human history. I feel it is much more realistic to see it as a modern industrial version of a long history of similar behavior.  
> 
> 
>> On Jun 20, 2016, at 10:37 AM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Part of the reason for that, as Timothy Snyder mentions in Bloodlands and Black Earth was that much of that perception was made by the West. Those in Ukraine and Belorussia saw a different holocaust but that was mostly forgotten (until now), partly due to Stalin and past-war communist suppression of jewish deaths by Nazi Germany.
>> 
>> Has anyone mentioned Wiesel's support for Netanyahu?
>> 
>> rich 
>> 
>> On Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 10:19 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>> I think Elie Wiesel’s writing gives a powerful sense of why the ovens became the dominant language. Jews were killed in several ways: frequently shot, machine gunned into mass graves, bayoneted,  starved, worked to death, cold exposure, ‘scientific’ experiments , and after the mass killing was already underway Jewish people were murdered via the inexpensive unbloody efficiency of gas chambers. But the numbers killed required mass disposal of bodies and cremation was the industrial solution. The fires are what survivors remember most vividly.  It stank; It turned people into ash, made them disappear without trace, or place.  It was the final step in a methodical attempt at global genocide, the erasure of a people.
>> Another similarity in this chapter in GR to the events of the Holocaust is the difference between Gottfried and Katje. Many Jewish people saw or were warned about what was coming, many fled but many were in denial, refusing to see what was happening and even cooperating with the deportation of other Jews.
>> 
>> At any rate, and by whatever mechanism or reason, the language of ovens is so common that some who have not looked at the details of the  holocaust think most  victims were burned alive. This did happen occasionally but was uncommon.
>> 
>> For Pynchon it also carries forward into the threat of  Nuclear fire  enabled by burning rocket fuel ( or bomber fuel), which is where the arc of the story is going.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Jun 19, 2016, at 1:16 PM, Richard Romeo <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Why ovens became a metaphor for the Holocaust perplexes me since most were already dead before they were placed in them (at least in the death camps)
>>> Misappropriation of the word that became conventional wisdom over time most likely
>>> 
>>> rich
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Jun 19, 2016, at 7:07 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> The Oven chapter. And GR is NOT about the Holocaust AT ALL? Don't think that holds up.
>>>> How does the Hansel & Gretel Story work as depth metaphor and there are other (is another)
>>>> Great Northern Myth at work.
>>>> 
>>>> Why a threesome?
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