Politics vs Art

[David Morris]

But WHERE does GR "depict the Holocaust?"

David Morris

On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 7:09 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> There are 8 uses of the word 'holocaust' in GR, as adjective and
> description, such as "holocaust sky".
> P uses it as Gothic-like atmosphere creation (at least), saturating the
> horror of GR with this resonant
> WW 2 named concept in this great anti-war novel. .
>
> On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 6:50 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> "By indirection we find direction out"......
>>
>> On Tue, May 3, 2016 at 10:28 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Million continues on FB:
>>>
>>> "naked corpses being carried out now that America was so close, to be
>>> stacked in front of the crematoriums" is a hallmark image of the Holocaust,
>>> and that word - and such images - were in wide circulation at the time that
>>> Pynchon wrote and published GR in which he describes a concentration camp
>>> with corpses stacked up to be cremated, and tells the story of a German
>>> engineer who made himself blind to the horror that supported his work on
>>> the rocket.
>>> Readers of GR (published in 1973 by an author who knows WWII history as
>>> well as any novelist, I expect) have never been confined within the
>>> boundaries of what might have been known to people in the novel, nor is the
>>> author, and some of the people in the novel certainly know about the Nazi
>>> extermination of Jews, so-called "gypsies", homosexuals, and political
>>> enemies in the camps, and other undesirables, whether or not the
>>> perpetrators referred to what they were doing as a Holocaust; the facts of
>>> their war crimes remain whatever the term used to refer to them
>>> collectively.  Pokler knew it was going on but refused to admit it to
>>> himself at the time, as he plainly explains in GR.
>>>
>>> My reply:
>>> This a graphic description of the V-2 slave-worker's fate. Within GR's
>>> revealed world it doesn't suggest genocide in WW2, now called Holocaust. We
>>> bring that knowledge into GR from outside the text.  In GR's revealed world
>>> this isn't a depiction of genocide, though it is extremely disturbing.  P
>>> had already described genocide in V.  I think it is telling that he chose
>>> that genocide to depict.  It is the neglected story.
>>>
>>> Your argument is a nit pick. The Holocaust isn't depicted in GR, but we
>>> all know it lurks LARGE offstage.  Old nits (& wits) die hard, don't they?
>>> Why pick this witlessness?  You are forging an argument that doesn't
>>> exist.  But isn't that what trolls do?  Same as it ever was...
>>>
>>> David Morris
>>>
>>>
>>
>
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