Politics vs Art

[Mark Kohut]

I agree with Morris that the Holocaust as we precisely, clearly, use it is
only in GR by indirection. Comes close with one embodied scene.....I like,
having learned from Millison, how the eight uses of the word, lower case
holocaust, are as over-the-top descriptions...Atmospheric, hysterical
realism uses such as "a holocaust sky" all adding to the Gothic-like
feeling P pervades GR with.

I think Arendt defining the bureaucracy of evil--"systemic
efficiency"--JT-- as she wrote about Eichmann was probably very important
to P's vision as the scholars say her Origins of Totalitarianism was in GR.

On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 7:54 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

>  Sorry. Not meaning to be oppositional just trying to clarify how the
> holocaust works in the world of the novel. Agree it is the larger system
> being examined and the holocaust the implied sign of a certain kind of
> systemic efficiency.
> > On May 5, 2016, at 7:39 AM, Richard Romeo <richard.romeo at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > My point was genocide isn't important or relevant or doesn't fit quite
> right in Pynchons within condemnation of the system with a capital S in GR
> >
> >
> >
> >> On May 5, 2016, at 6:44 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> I don’t see how what David is saying can be argued. The death camps are
> not depicted, the mass extermination is approached indirectly. It is there
> haunting the novel. In fact Pynchon seems to focus more on the fascism
> evident within presumed the enemies of fascism like Rathenau, Pointsman,
> Prentice, Jamf, Them, Marvy, than on Axis Fascists. Only Blicero reflects
> the full blown madness of high echelon Nazis. With him the rockets become
> the emblem of  the ovens as an act of vengeace, sacrificial offering,
> psycho-sexual domination, sadism, fascination and envy.
> >>> On May 4, 2016, at 10:01 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> Death camp versus concentration camp versus labor camp versus Summer
> camp?  No.  The question was about the HOLOCAUST.
> >>>
> >>> Holocaust (or Shoah), I think, refers to systematic genocide, not
> collateral genocide of Jews by Germany in WW2.
> >>>
> >>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust
> >>>
> >>> The Holocaust (from the Greek ὁλόκαυστοςholókaustos: hólos, "whole"
> and kaustós, "burnt"), also known as the Shoah (Hebrew: השואה, HaShoah,
> "the catastrophe"), was a genocide in which Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany and
> its collaborators killed about six millionJews.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 8:42 AM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> one of the major misconceptions about the Holocaust and mass murder is
> that most people think only of Auschwitz which technically was not a death
> camp say like Treblinka was. Dora was not a death camp either--they were
> work camps in essence, horrible in any case. still broadly speaking we can
> include such camps as part of the Holocaust if our definitions expand on a
> broader definition of extermination in its myriad forms (gas, labor, rape,
> etc). So, yes Pynchon does address that in Dora.
> >>>
> >>> The missing bit from GR which I think Pynchon cant adequately utilize
> directly w/r/t to the Holocaust is that there was no logical reason for
> such mass murder from an economic point of view beyond appropriating space.
> If you build up your message as Pynchon does about Them and systems and
> repressions and markets and link them all up, it cant really digest the
> insanity of Nazi racial policy and ideology which underpinned much of its
> actions in the East.
> >>>
> >>> i guess what I'm saying is hybrid camps like Auschwitz or outright
> labor camps like Dora where there was an economic benefit for Germany or
> perceived to be (many projects were failures) are easier to explain than
> outright death mills like Treblinka, Sobibor, etc. maybe that's one reason
> for Pynchon's 'aloofness' on the subject
> >>>
> >>> just my two cents
> >>>
> >>> rich
> >>>
> >>> On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 8:32 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>> But WHERE does GR "depict the Holocaust?"
> >>>
> >>> David Morris
> >>
> >> -
> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> > -
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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