Lineland

[Alan Westrope]

On Wed, 23 Apr 1997 07:14:10 PDT, "Shag Miller" <shag2x at hotmail.com> wrote:
>I'm a member of the list, though don't want to identify myself.  I received the 
>following email message yesterday.  It may interest some of you.  Jules Siegel 
>is planning once again to capitalize on his (marginal?) relationship with 
>Pynchon by putting out a book made up (apparently) of excerpts from the 
>interchanges he provoked on Pynchon-L.  I've always assumed list posts are 
>protected by the same common-law copyright provisions that apply to one's own 
>manuscripts. Beyond that assumption, which is open to practical question on the
>Internet, I fail to understand why Jules Siegel or Dale Larson (sweet irony in 
>the surname), the publisher of Intangible Assets Manufacturing, should profit 
>from our casually written messages.  The text of Larson's message follows.

For the web-impaired, I'm appending a copy of the book's back cover, from
www.iam.com.  Looks like Jules' appearance on the list was orchestrated so
he'd be able to bring the book out in sync with M&D, thus profiting from *its*
publicity.  Now, I don't give a shit about the book -- I dispatched the whole
Jules episode to various digital malebolge with the procmail filter program --
but I do believe the Berne copyright agreements state that material is
copyright when it is instantiated in a tangible medium, like several dozen
disk drives.

Hmmmm...wonder if *Chrissie* was carrying a cassette recorder at the NY
meet? :-)

OK, without further <yawn...> ado:
===========================================================================

                      A 20TH CENTURY LITERARY ROMANCE
   ______________________________________________________________________
                                      
                    They were an explosive combination!
                                      
    THE TIME: The late Sixties THE SETTING: The beaches and redwoods of
   California, the streets and hippie hang-outs of Greenwich Village and
   Sunset Strip, the superstar mansions of Beverly Hills. THE CHARACTERS:
                                      
       Thomas Pynchon WORLD-FAMOUS NOVELIST. High-born, camera-
       shy and reclusive, he was writing his next literary masterpiece.
       Why did he act like a man on the run?

       Chrissie Jolly 18-YEAR-OLD ARTIST/MODEL. Full of surprises that
       did not go with a Pepsodent smile, she danced like The White
       Goddess in hot flesh and teen underwear.

       Jules Siegel STREET-SMART JOURNALIST. Covering the rock scene
       and youth underground for Playboy, and Rolling Stone, he could
       have been a character in The Godfatherand probably was.
       
                  She could only marry one of them, but no
                 one would stop her from loving them both!
                                      
     THIRTY YEARS LATER, it all explodes again on the Internet, as two
   characters talk about an author, and the result is a new kind of book
           that's changing the way people think about literature.
                                      
       Is it a true-life novel? Personal journalism? An uncanny hoax?
       Whatever you decide, Lineland will make you laugh and make you
      cry and you won't put it down until the last page, the last tear-
                          drop and the last laugh!
                                      
              Lineland: Mortality and Mercy on the Internet's
                    Pynchon-L at Waste.Org Discussion List 
                                      
                 By Jules Siegel, Christine Wexler, et al.
                                      
                      Intangible Assets Manufacturing
                             828 Ormond Avenue
                         Drexel Hill, PA 19026-2604
                                      
                        Web Site http://www.iam.com
                             Email info at iam.com
                                  us$11.95
                                      
                       cover designed by jules siegel