too many academics...

[Mike Weaver]

On Mon, 3 Feb  David Casseres wrote

>That Henry sez
>
>>Maybe the problem isn't too many academics. Maybe it's too few 
>>blue-collar working class stiffs like Steely and me. 
>
>Could be.  But you know, I've railed for years about how our literature 
>has been taken over, to its detriment, by the academies.  However, 
>reading this list -- the only reading of literary criticism I've done in 
>thirty years outside of book reviews in such venues as The Nation -- has 
>made me put a finer point on it.
>
>Academics on this list have given me an awful lot of good new insights 
>into Pynchon and into other writers too.  After all, people who get paid 
>full-time to read, and think about it, and talk about it, and teach about 
>it, and write about it, are going to come up with some stuff that 
>blue-collar stiffs wouldn't, or tech weenies like me either.  And vice 
>versa, of course, but no one would dare to say right out loud that 
>working stiffs and computer jockeys should shut up about literature.  
>Think about it.
<snip>

As a manual worker I'd like to second David's remarks.  No doubt in time I'd
have delved deep into the subtleties of TP's work but it was Edward
Mendelson(?)'s Twentieth Century Masters and the Mindful Pleasures
collections of essays which helped speed me on my way to fanatical devotion
to GR in particular.

Re Henry's original comment:
  I'm logging on every day or two and reading all your communiques and
occasionally attempting to join in, BUT I'm as yet a slow typist and am not
practised at getting my thoughts into coherent written form.  So for the
most part I remain a lurker. There are presumably many other lurkers out
there in a similar frame to myself. This does mean that the contents of the
list is likely to be skewed towards the output of academics and journalists,
people at ease (or should that be atease) with the keyboard interface. It is
that rather than the collar colour which matters.

  Mind you voice recognition software is getting cheaper... Soon you won't
be able to shut me up and I will feel confident in joining in the flame wars
and more amiable exchanges which I currently voyeuristically enjoy.

        I'm really glad to have discovered the list and am getting great
pleasure and intellectual stimulation from reading you all- not to mention
having occasion to let out some raucous laughs. 

        Meetingwise what about a UK one, Andrew, Eric, Jan... Yes it would
have to be in London wouldn't it, (snore), I'm in the NW - but I do get down
there sometimes.

Tata for now  Mike
                                  
                                           
Mike Weaver (pic at gn.apc.org)