Pynchon & Erich Fromm

[Mark Kohut]

So, I know that Erich Fromm's ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM
was a fine influence on Pynchon's GRAVITY'S RAINBOW,
so after rereading it, I wanted to read about Fromm observing
the world and conceiving and writing that book.

So, I tried to get the major bio of Fromm from interlibrary loan
but I could not and instead I got a small book in the Twayne UNITED STATES
AUTHORS series. By one Don Hausdorf, then at NYU. Published 1972, note
well.

After some personal words (in letters to the author) from Fromm about the
almost overwhelming effect
of WW! on young Erich---he was fourteen when it started, he said he was
'struck with the hysteria of hate"
that surged through Germany......"millions allowed themselves to be
slaughtered on both sides for the sake
of some territory and the vanity of some leaders".....

Then Don Hausdorf writes this:

"The end of the war brought comfort to the Frankfurt banking houses, but it
also saw the genesis of
Nazism, *the "curve of horror" as novelist Thomas Pynchon has called it,*
that began its ascendance under the early Weimar Republic...
Fromm became increasingly interested in "the hidden forces which act behind
the back of the participants".

A little Google Scholar search shows Mr. Hausdorf published an article in
Wisconsin Studies of American Literature on Thomas Pynchon's V in
1966--where the phrase appears, of course.

Everything Connects.