Personality

[LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu]

received:
" Yes, a multitude of sins can be laid at                    
biographical criticism's door, and yes, the author is less important in the
grand scheme of things than the work. But not unimportant, just less. If the
author were completely irrelevant, why is this the Pynchon list instead of
the Gravity's Rainbow list? Why do we discuss GR vis-a-vis V more often than
we discuss it in conjunction with Junky?"

The paraphrase from SLOW LEARNER that you cite indicts the incredible influence
that T.S. Eliot still had when TRP was just picking up a pen.  But Eliot's
own poems indict that flip side of his dictum--"Only those who have a personality
and emotions can know what it is to want to escape from these things."

Eliot never could escape his own personality--any more than one can out run one's
shadow.  And he only escaped emotions by coming to the still center of the 
turning world in FOUR QUARTETS.

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)