Feminists to your flamethrowers!

[Jules Siegel]

At 08:19 AM 04/28/97 -0400, Ted Samsel wrote:

>So it is is fine for your major professor to steal your work, but not a
private schlubb?

Neither one is stealing anything. We are each disseminating information in
the course of commenting on it. And we are each getting paid for it.

Let's try an analogy.

An energetic feminist enraged by the fact that I have dared to limp along
the public street in front of her ivory tower in grotesquely big-bosomed,
fat-assed drag singing, "I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts" prepares a
banner with the headline "Creepy Jules!" followed by a couple of paragraphs
of similar epithets and hangs it out like Rapunzel letting down her hair.

Instead of climbing up for his kiss, Jules photographs this banner and sends
it to the local newspaper with his rebuttal insisting that he is not a creep
but a cripple.

This is fair use.

The newspaper sends its own photographer to photograph the banner and
interviews both Jules and his antagonist. It runs the photograph, the full
text of the banner, Jules' written statement and its own reporting.

This is also fair use.

Unless Jules specifically offered the photograph and the text of the letter
for sale, it would be fair use for the newspaper to use them without so much
as seeking permission, but most newspapers would not do this without first
checking if the incident actually happened.

The manufacturer of the materials out of which the banner is made runs an
advertisement featuring the photograph saying "When it's time to flame, you
need materials that can stand the heat."

This is commercial use and is not legal.

The advertiser must first obtain permission and, if required, pay a use fee
determined by negotiation.

The only vaguely valid issue that anyone has raised about my use of the
pynchon-l postings in Lineland is that it would have been more courteous to
have notified the authors first.

I agree. I did do that in the few cases that I felt required it. Most of the
others have not complained, as far as I know.

Dealing with John Mascaro delayed the book almost a full month. We were also
in the middle of the final typesetting. The book is a very tight mosaic. Any
change produces ripple effects throughout the design. It would have been
difficult and annoying and time-wasteful to deal with any further paranoid
acting out, and we wouldn't have done it at gunpoint, much less when we
there was no legal obligation to do so.

Mascaro asked why I stopped writing to him. Dale asked me not to create
further conflict by copying him items such as the following strategy I
offered during the worst part of the process:

> I believe it would be best to just ignore him politely right now and
> not pay him a lot of attention other than to tell him that his
> feelings are understandable and we sympathize with them deeply and
> he should go to one of those places in Los Angeles where a
> good-looking wench in a nurse's uniform will administer a relaxing
> high colonic enema. You never know, maybe Princess Di will be there
> and she'll give him good advice about this. She seems to have
> weathered worse press experiences (including the details of her
> enemas) and everyone still loves her, so why not Mascaro? I'm sure
> that at this point Dale would be happy to pay the enema fees for
> both of them, maybe for a three-way with the nurse, too.

I also frankly did not feel that I owed any courtesy at all to the folks I
knew would complain, as most of them had failed to show me (or anyone else)
any courtesy in my on the list. The others, such as Penny Padgett, had asked
some questions and gotten a lot of answers. I reproduced their questions
accurately and even corrected their typos and inadvertent grammatical errors.

I mean, come on. Did Janelle Brown call me back to check before she wrote
her wildly inaccurate article? Does Janelle care that Anita and I are
getting a divorce because she refuses to believe I didn't identify Chrissie
as my wife? We'll probably work this out, but it did get a bit sticky when
she saw this obvious Freudian slip. It doesn't matter that it was Janelle's
slip, not mine, because we are dealing with feminist logic, (even though
Anita is not a feminist), and I am not allowed to mention anything that
might be construed as female underwear.

Did I conceal the fact that I was a journalist here, or did I talk about it
frequently? Prudent Penny was suspicious of my asking her what she was all
about. She chose not to answer because she knew that I planned to use this
in a major exposé for my forthcoming Map of the Homes of the Database
Programming Stars. She could also have chosen not to ask Chrissie or me
questions. If she had pointed out in advance that she was going to demand to
see the quotes, she would have gotten no answers.

Courtesy aside, Dale and I also wanted the book to come out in time for
Mason & Dixon. We did not wish to jeopardize this any further by getting
into a dingleberry-encrusted hairball with people who had already
demonstrated their profound delight in useless argument.

"Why is that?" I hear the chorus. "*Why* did you want the book to come out
in time for Mason & Dixon?"

Because we wanted to get publicity and sell books.

Aiyeee! To the bunkers, quickly!

Now we can set off a major nuclear attack by revealing my motives for
publishing the book. The principal motive was to bring myself to the
attention of the literary world in the most expedient and entertaining way
possible after a fifteen-year absence. Right up there too was The Profit
Motive. If anyone wants to argue about The Profit Motive, I suggest that you
move to Cuba, which is, I believe, the last place on earth to begin to
realize dimly that economies require profit in order to thrive.

Revenge had nothing at all to do with it. I feel no animosity at all to
Thomas Pynchon. Where it really counts -- who got the girl -- I won and he
lost. Maybe Bianca was his revenge. I think Chrissie might have some good
reason to be angry at his sadomasochistic rape of her viciously caricatured
image, but we really didn't see much resentment in her interview did we? If
he did hurt her, the mere fact that someone allowed her to reveal the rape
and talk about him is then considered blasphemy? If this had been physical
rape, would he be allowed to complain about invasion of privacy, the poor thing?

Feminists?

--------------------------------------------
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