Meshugginah posts, and other things sundry

[Monte Davis]

> As I pointed out in Lineland, I do think that Chrissie was resentful of
what Pynchon did with her persona in Gravity's Rainbow...  More than that,
Pynchon did talk trash about Chrissie in Gravity's Rainbow and she was not
there to defend herself. <

Precisely. Chrissie was not there. In  fact -- are you sitting down? -- no
flesh and blood person was "there"... no "persona" was there... only black
letters on white pages. I can't see the letters "Chrissie" anywhere in
those pages. 

Were it not for your posts and the Playboy article, I would never have
known that Chrissie (1) existed, (2) had been acquainted with Pynchon, or
(3) had been "mined" for descriptions and characterizations in GR.
Presumably the same goes for almost all other readers.

So... granting for the sake of argument that a perceived relation between
Chrissie and some characters in GR is in some way damaging to
Chrissie... tell me again, please, whose writings have established and
drawn attention to that relation, and continue to do so? 

***

I'll happily stipulate that Chrissie, Faera, you, your father's gangland
friends, and the guy in the next cubicle at Boeing in 1961 are ALL better,
finer, kinder, altogether swell-er human beings than Thomas Pynchon. He
does, however, a claim on my attention that none of you have -- the
fictions that are the subject of this listserver.

I'll happily stipulate that you grokked the zeitgeist of Northern
California in the 1970s infinitely more fully than Thomas Pynchon. He did,
however, turn his perceptions into an interesting fiction; so far, all I've
seen from you is posts insisting that he got it all wrong. Had Vineland
been offered as a memoir, or even as naturalistic fiction, those posts
would be of some interest. As it was neither, they're off in deep left
field. 

You have, on occasion, had interesting things to say as a reader about
Pynchon's fictions.  I thank you for those contributions. But so far, very
few of your observations about their author have held any more interest
than some paparazzo's snapshot of him. Unfortunately, for the same reasons
such snapshots have caused a flurry here, so have your sillier posts. 

And... since you've ventured into pop group psychology in characterizing
the listserver participants as a cult... I'll venture into editorial
advice, based on fifteen years as contributor, contributing editor and
staff editor at four national magazines: "Jules, you've gotten a  Playboy
article and a short book out of a friendship that's now, what, 25 years in
the past? That's all it's worth, and maybe a bit more. Time to move on.
Or at least give vent to the obsession on siegel-l at nonfictionnovel.org,
rather than on pynchon-l. Or do some serious research, and write a
biography of the man. Or something."

Because what you're interpreting as a defensive response by "cultists" is
perhaps 10% that, at most. The rest is simply exasperation with *your*
persona here: that of a literary parasite who persistently and
self-servingly misunderstands the nature of fiction.

No doubt there's much more, and better, to you, but you're just not getting
it across. Not because we're cultists, but because on this topic, you're in
a rut that someone of your obvious intelligence and self-awareness really
should have broken out of long ago.

-Monte