wallace-l: Thank You

[Prabhakar Ragde]

Jon May wrote:

> So how dare I? Who am I to
> get upset? I'm just some fanboy

I have been thinking about this, since the weekend, as it dawned on me 
how affected I was. I don't want to be another teenage girl lighting a 
candle for Kurt Cobain. I have had this happen before -- with Ian Curtis 
in 1980, with the death of Minutemen guitarist d.boon in a car crash in 
1985, with Richard Brautigan and Hunter S. Thompson, even, in a very 
similar incident, with a colleague in my own department. I was 
criticized -- on this list -- for taking an overly-analytical view of 
9/11 while the ashes still smouldered.

The phenomenon I'm trying to analyze renders me somewhat incapable of 
analysis. I had thought it was my long involvement with wallace-l and 
the friends I have made through it, but I have been reading of similar 
reactions in people who have never heard of wallace-l. There may be a 
parallel in what DFW said about AA in IJ and elsewhere, what he said in 
the Kenyon address, and his general feeling that there could be too much 
irony and too much distance, even as he sought to wield those tools in 
moderation. Sometimes the right point of balance can be a little 
embarrassing, intellectually.

As for a certain Host I wish we'd stop talking about, beyond the obvious 
schadenfreude, perhaps his harsh reaction has roots akin to homophobia 
-- perhaps the thought that one's carefully-constructed edifice of 
bluster might be inadequate to keep one from some complicated truths 
about oneself drives one to demonization and dismissal in terms that 
attempt to separate the "strength" one wishes for from the "weakness" 
one feels. --PR