Comments on LBernier at tribune.com

Tue Apr 29 12:35:55 CDT 1997

Firt of all, I would like to beg a little tolerance from the folks who are
not interested in this discussion. There are two factors involved: [1]
answering and, I hope, resolving the discomfort of some about "Lineland;"
[2] making sure that these answers appear in the historical record. If I
send the messages privately they won't be in the Archive. I think that a
book that began on this list is very much Pynchon-related and deserves a bit
of space. I have received more than a few private messages of encouragement
and even applause and no private cease-and-desist orders.

I think that we can cut down on much of this comment if people will stop
accusing me of lying and bizarre cunning. I am known as a very honest
person. I try very hard not to lie. I define honesty as being able to admit
that you lie once in a while. I have not lied about anything at all here. I
am not very cunning. I could be, but I chose to leave that all behind a long
time ago. It creates a lot of unnecesasry emotional baggage. You have to
travel light when you explore new worlds.

I don't think I will be doing this much longer, as it is very
time-consuming. In the next few days, you will all have Mason & Dixon to
talk about and I'm sure there won't be any more comments on "Lineland."
Meanwhile:

At 10:56 AM 04/29/97 BST, andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk wrote:

>LBernier at tribune.com writes:

>> What about when one of the personalities involved intentionally initiates
said flame war to suit his own purposes? 

>I find it hard to believe that Jules worked this out as a grand scam in
advance. A flame war with Mascaro would be far less use to him than a decent
set of interviews with Chrissie.

The flame wars took me completely by surprise. I had only been on one list
before, erotica at cyberia.com, which was a model of courtesy. There was a bit
of scuffling which was instantly squelched by the owner/moderator, Mary Anne
Mohanraj. The flames form a very small part of the book and the bulk of the
main flame war, which was about political correctness and had hardly
anything to do with me, is only alluded to in a couple of sentences.

>Judging by his writing career and by some remarks he has made I suspect
wanted to engineer something along the lines of a Playboy interview which
means that techno-babble and 'net personalities' are the last thing he would
have tried to capture.

I had nothing in mind at all. Somewhere along the way geirland at aol.com
suggested privately that I do a book and offered to contact his agent in my
behalf and I half-heartedly authorized him to do so. When Faera (my
daughter, for those new to the story) and Chrissie visited with the Pynchon
folk in New York, they urged them to get me to write a book about Pynchon
and/or this experience. Faera and Chrissie just laughed at them, knowing how
I felt about it.

By then I had unsubscribed, but I did think about getting an article
published somewhere and sent the text of the interview with Chrissie to some
magazines (not including Playboy), none of whom were interested. Putting
this together made me see that I might find a book in all this -- not about
Thomas Pynchon, but about coming out of the jungle and getting on an
Internet discussion list. I then contacted Dale L. Larson, who came down to
see me in February. Although I had done a little preliminary work, the book
began when I signed the contract on Feb. 18.

I was obviously aware of the publicity value of the Pynchon material and we
are, of course, doing our best to exploit that angle, given the release of
Mason & Dixon. We would be pretty dumb not to, wouldn't we? Once this phase
is over, we will begin promoting Lineland for what it is -- a new kind of book:

Pynchon aside, "Lineland" is notable for the following:

[1] It may be the first book that has originated from e-mail correspondence.
I will appreciate hearing about any others.

[2] It was produced entirely online, except for Dale's brief visit to
Cancun. I saw the final proofs online in Acrobat 3.0 format. Because of the
routing problems from Mexcio, I had to get up at 3 am almost every day
during the last two weeks so that the by-now very large files could ftp back
and forth. There was too much traffic during daylight hours. During the
final week, the main server for the Yucatan Peninsula was down for three
full days and we communicated by fax.

[3] I not only wrote the text, but I also set it in type and designed the
book in every aspect, from cover illustration to the back cover copy. Dale
gave me 100% creative control. I'm sure you can appreciate how revolutionary
this is.  You will perhaps remember that although I am known as a writer, I
am also a graphic designer, a very unusual combination. Few authors have
ever achieved 100% control for text, much less the entire production. Even
Mark Twain was censored by his wife. His greatest work, his "Autobiography"
has never been published in the form that he wrote it and was heartlessly
butchered by its last editor, who rearranged everything in chronological
order, even though Twain specifically wrote that he wanted the book to be
published exactly the way he wrote it.

[4] It is one of the first (maybe only) books about the Internet culture
that attempts to provide a kind of slice of Internet life, rather than
extended technical and philosophical discussions about cyberspace. It is
cyberspace set in type.

I think that it is fair to say that from what I have read about "Mason &
Dixon" Pynchon closes the final chapter on the literary form called the
novel that began with Defoe's "A Journal of the Plague Years." I think that
"Lineland" is the beginning of something new that has no name. I believe
that I have invented a new kind of book, but we will have to wait for
history's opinion about that and I won't be around. Those of you who are may
then take some pride in having been here with me.

>The fact that the result is not being published in Playboy sggests to me
that Jules was far from in control of the dialogue.

I have very little contact with Playboy or the literary world in general
(not to speak of the world in general). I don't think that most people on
pynchon-l are aware of the significance of my living in remote locations of
Mexico since 1981. When I lived in Puerto Morelos there was only one
telephone, a public service operated by TelMex that connected via radio to
Cancun. We lived without electricity and running water for almost a year and
cooked on a campfire. Even when we settled in Cancun after Hurricane Gilbert
(September 1988), I did not have a telephone, although I soon had a complete
PC-based graphic arts workshop. 

When I first got on the Internet, I had to take Faera's portable into Cancun
to the ISP's office to connect. Later, I used the phone in the
administration office of the condominium complex in which I live and have my
office. The apartments have no extensions. My use began to present a problem
for them and I finally had to get my own telephone, the first in almost 30
years. I gave up on telephones when Chrissie and I left New York for good in
1970. From time to time, I had fairly regular access to a phone before
coming to Mexico, but have not had my own line during all those years,
except for one month in 1977 when I was living in Mendocino and Chrissie was
living on Kuai with another man and revealed that she wanted to talk about
coming back. I got the phone to make this possible and left it behind when I
moved to Los Angeles a little while later.

I have not looked at more than a dozen hours of television in about thirty
years and I have seen about 30 movies since then, mostly in the last two or
three years. As I've mentioned before, I live on an island in the lagoon
formed by the main island of Cancun. I go into Cancun two or three times a
month. I have not been out of the state of Quintana Roo since 1983. Before
that, we lived in Cabo San Lucas, the city of Oaxaca and Puerto Escondido,
Oaxaca. None of these qualify as the real world in any sense.

In the context of these facts, I think that most of the unfair speculation
will appear absurd. In another month or so, "Lineland" will be available and
we can discuss it on its own terms, if anyone is interested. Until then, go
and enjoy Mason & Dixon and try to stop quarreling about nonesense.

--
Professional English-Language Editorial Services
Jules Siegel http://www.caribe.net.mx/siegel/jsiegel.htm
>From US: http://www.yucatanweb.com/siegel/jsiegel.htm
Apdo 1764 Cancun Q. Roo 77501 Tel 011-52-98 87-49-18 Fax 87-49-13