NP Witt List (was something Pynchon-related at some point, maybe)

[Doug Millison]

Pynchon might be able to shed a little light into these deep waters, from V
("Confessions of Fausto Maijstral'"):

Living as he does much of the time in a world of metaphor, the poet is
always acutely conscious that metaphor has no value apart from its
function; that it is a device, an artifice. So that while others may look
on the laws of physics as legislation and God as a human form with beard
measured in light-years and nebulae for sandals, Fausto's kind are alone
with the task of living in a universe of things which simply are, and
cloaking that innate mindlessness with comfortable and pious metaphor so
that the "practical" half of humanity may continue in the Great Lie,
confident that their machines, dwellings, streets and weather share the
same human motives, personal traits and fits of contrariness as they. Poets
have been at this for centuries. It is the only useful purpose they do
serve in society; and if every poet were to vanish tomorrow, society would
live no longer than the quick memories and dead books of their poetry.

D O U G  M I L L I S O N ||||||||||||| millison at online-journalist.com