got pynched yet?

[Craig Clark]

John Mascaro asked:

> I dunno, gang, is it me or what?  I've had more than ample opportunity to realize how 
> *off list* some of my ideas and reactions to things are, but am I the only one who finds 
> this *booksmith* marketing blitz of the list absurdly funny and simultaneously 
> pathetically depressing?  I mean, looking at those pompous trading cards, with the 
> brooding *literary lionheart* Rick Moody or the *luscious, lilting* Anka Radakovich, and 
> then the air brushed photo of TRP (did they think the teeth--by far the most interesting 
> detail in that photo--made our boy look less lionhearted, or less luscious than a priemier 
> *world-class* author should?).  Am I the only one less than impressed by Joel Rose's 
> white boy dredlocks (BTW--his--masculine heart *beats too loudly for his own good*).   
> Please note that I haven't read Moody, Radakovich or Rose, so for all I know they may be 
> really good writers  (somehow I doubt it, but I am willing to be educated).
> The evening of pynchonalia could be fun, I guess--any listers attending should let us 
> know how it goes--but at the same time, the marketing angle so far outshines the literary 
> (assuming there is one), that it might just all be a travesty.  Sheesh.
> 
> johnny bummed out
> 
> PS  What happens to a culture that can no longer distinguish between the impulse to 
> communicate and the impulse to market?  Why do I feel like I need to go read old 
> Herman's CONFIDENCE MAN  right about now?

I happen to agree with every word John sez here, but if you foax 
don't get together among yourselves once I'm gone from the list, 
and decide whose gonna snailmail me some of those trading cards, 
I'll be most upset... I suppose you should send me a couple so I can 
pass 'em on to HAG as well...


Craig Clark

"Living inside the system is like driving across
 the countryside in a bus driven by a maniac bent
 on suicide."
   - Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"