The Uptempo R-M Woods

[Steelhead]

I'm writing this from the bleak surroundings of downtown Anchorage, on my
way to the even grimmer outpost of Valdez, to fabulate another specious
story for The Nation about the oil companies that run this cursed planet.
Fortunately, the still luscious sanctuaries of Cordova and Ketchikan are
only a few days away, if the weather holds, which it doesn't seem all that
inclined to do.

Chris K.'s belated (by several months) post to the list reads like it
could've been written by an uptempo Rose Mary Woods, defending the
outrageous antics of a would-be wiretapper.

Let's face it. There are only two rational reasons why Chris K. should be
so upset about my attributionless assertion regarding davemarc's
tape-recorder fetish:  One, what she told me was a lie; or, two, she took a
private pleasure in the intimate knowledge of davemarc's Gene Hackman-like
transgression (which seems to be the case, as evidenced by the manner in
which she slides so effortlessly into the Dude's mocking and sonorous
prose-style).

I don't know Chrissie, or Faera, or Richard Romeo or any of the others who
may have been the unwitting victims of surreptitious taping, but I was
certainly appalled when CK told me that davemarc exposed his tape recorder
at her after the NYC session like a giddy exhibitionist on a stroll around
Grant's Tomb. What was the flashing of the device meant to convey, if not
the illicit possibility he had caught the delightful Chrissie on tape, eh?


Talk about invasion of privacy!

Against my better judgement, I kept Chris K.'s little secret
private--instead of sharing it immediately with the group, so that at any
future meeting of the NYC Pynchon-heads the attendees might have the
opportunity to suggest a full-cavity body search of davemarc before sitting
down with him for chatter, truffles and apperitifs.

On average, I get about two hundred email messages a day. At least half of
them are "personal." Those which are meant to be confidential are always
marked as such. Unless people advise me their comments are for attribution,
I always assume implicitly the information is "on background." Which is
precisely how I used it in my post.

If I have any blame in the matter, it was in outing davemarc as a
post-script to a debate which he had turned personal through his
unrelenting, shrill and baseless attacks on my professional integrity. I
should have relayed the matter dispassionately, long ago, as a public
service--in my experience people with fetishes for concealed recording
devices often turn out to be either Child Molesters, Deconstructionists, or
Republicans.

Steelhead