Tainted by AOL?

[WKLJAZZ at aol.com]

  A happy and relatively new member of the pynchon-l, I download my e-mail
and eagerly await the continuing discussion of TRP, SF, Hiroshima, Gaddis and
other recent topics.  Wow!  What a flattering comment from one message --
that the members of the pynchon-l are the sharpest foax on the net!

  But then, just a message or so later, I discover that my status as an AOL
accesser of this list makes me one of the "untouchables" of the crew, a
participant of suspect lineage, an otherwise anonymous voice that is
sentenced to bear not one but THREE scarlet letters after his @ symbol!
 (Speaking of Puritans, if I admitted to a weakness for pigs, might I even
claim some link to the hymn-writer and ancestor, William Slothrop?)

  And the ultimate dis -- Pynchon himself would NEVER be part of AOL!

Preteritely yours,

Will L. (also bald and, uh, maybe about ten pounds pudgier than necessary
a-and -- I confess -- a HIGH SCHOOL English teacher rather than a professor
or some sort.  USED TO BE a lawyer, if that makes it any better {??}.  And --
can't believe I'm owning up on this one -- I actually knew AOL kingpin Steve
Case in college.  There . . . I've confessed.)