Politics vs Art

[David Morris]

I think GR isn't primarily "about" the power/money dynamics of War or
Technology or Capitalism.  I think it is primarily about the nature of
human consciousness, and how that inherent nature manifests, and what
internal structures motivates its manifestation.  I think GR is largely
full of metaphysics as inquiry into the relationship of perceived versus
structural (real) reality, or even the question if such questions can be
answered . GR was his existential book.  I've voiced this opinion before,
so forgive my repetition.

David Morris

On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 7:55 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> Clearly Pynchon is portraying a world in which rationality is not always
> in control.  Blicero's rituals with Katje and Gottfried are metaphors of
> power structures, rituals to invoke encounters, powers higher than
> themselves (and maybe to court their own demise in the process).  Victims
> are can sometimes turn the tables, push the Witch into the oven, and
> escape.  Or they can have Impolex-shrouded orgasms, willingly sacrificed,
> embracing annihilation as the kiss of transcendence.. He doesn't portray
> the V-2 program as a rational War-strategy (although terrorism is a
> rational technique of War).  It is also a religion.  I can't tie it all
> together.  I think it is meant to remain an oscillating enigma.
>
> I don't think any of these observations are the reason he doesn't depict
> the Shoah directly.  I think it is meant to remain in the shadows in GR,
> like the never-seen monster in horror movies.
>
> David Morris
>
> David Morris
>
> On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 2:57 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hyper-technically, the Auschwitz complex --  almost 50 camps in all and
>> hybrid,as you say -- was originally  a concentration camp (Auschwitz I) for
>> Polish political prisoners, added the Auschwitz II-Birkenau cluster as
>> prison then extermination camp for Jews and Gypsies, then added Auschwitz
>> III-Monowitz as slave labor camp for IG Farben's synthtic-rubber factory..
>> which is why Primo Levi, an Italian Jew and a skilled chemist, survived at
>> Monowitz rather than dying at Birkenau. Mixed priorities...
>>
>> Why not follow up on your sense that P's "systems...markets" message
>> "can't really digest the insanity of Nazi racial policy and ideology"?
>> Why not question yout implicit premise that systems and markets are by
>> their nature sane and rational? Recall my earlier point on Blackett's "you
>> can't run a war on gusts of emotion": that  the German V-weapon campaign
>> and the US-UK city-bombing campaign *were not rational uses of economic and
>> military resources,* no matter how much technology and organization went
>> into them. They were supposed to be answers to "how do we win the war?",
>> but in fact were answers to "how do we HURT THE ENEMY?" They were highly
>> organized, rationally implemented gusts of emotion. Likewise, all those
>> trains taking Jews to the death camps could have more profitably been
>> supplying the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front -- except that the felt
>> threat from the Jews was beyond or beneath rationality, deeper and darker
>> than that from the Red Army.
>>
>> Remember how Prof.-Dr, Jamf prizes the bold, lion-like ionic bond
>> *seizing* electrons over the wimpy sharing of the covalent bond (Viking
>> 577)? Remember "a conspiracy of human beings and techniques" crying like a
>> vampire "I need my night's blood, my funding, my funding, ahh"(521)?
>>
>> Rather than saying Pynchon *couldn't* deal with the Holocaust directly
>> because he'd chosen an approach based on the primacy of rational systems,
>> markets, cost/benefit calculations, etc... consider the possibility that
>> he's questioning how rational they really are. The peculiar horror of the
>> Holocaust, after all, was not mass murder -- Rwanda or Cambodia or the
>> partition of India will do for that -- but the *juxtaposition* of mass
>> murder with an "advanced" European nation's highly organized, systematic
>> implementation. You propose that people using technology and rationality to
>> do insane things poses a problem for Pynchon in GR; I think it's at the
>> heart of the book.
>>
>> On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 9:42 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
>>>>
>>>>>
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>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
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