notoriety (fwd)

[Brian Siano]

Forwarded message:
> From: "Patricia Chui" <pchui at smtp.wwnorton.com>
>    
> siano at cceb.med.upenn.edu (Brian Siano) wrote:
> 
>>  The thing is, when some people write fiction, some things just
>> _feel_ right, and trying to explain _why_ it feels right is trying to
>> justify and explain some fairly private (and perhaps inexplicable)
>> mental processes. That's actually a pretty scary thing for any writer;
>> there's always the chance that, upon some humorless examination, one's
>> own thought processes might be suddenly revealed as being a lot less
>> noble or selfless than one wnats them to be.
> 
> This reminds of when, in college, my Contemporary American Lit. class
> had Ishmael Reed as a guest speaker (we had just read MUMBO JUMBO).
> Someone asked Reed, "I've noticed that you didn't use any quotation marks
> in your dialogue.  What sort of message were you trying to impart
> by leaving them out?"
> 
> Reed answered, "Well, I dunno.  Everyone was trying to be artsy and
> avant-garde back then, so I just did that because I figured it looked
> sort of different and artsy.  I guess, in retrospect, maybe I should have
> used quotation marks after all."
> 
> We all sat there a little stunned.  So much for symbolism.

	I love stories like that. The thing is, we've all see some
really abstruse theories as to why Pynchon keeps to himself-- protest
over the commodification of the writer, some Derridean argument about
the author being nonexistent and the _text_ having primacy, and lots
of others. But given the sense of humor the man has, does anyone
_really_ think he'd go to such extreme lengths for some kind of lit
theory? I think the best explanation's the simplest: he's probably a
little more bashful about his work than usual. (After all, none of the
I-met-Pynchon accounts I've seen describe him as a twitchy paranoid.)

Brian Siano - siano at cceb.med.upenn.edu