"use" of sources

[Doug Millison]

Thanks for the pointer to this work.

As you say, it is a legitimate literary topic. I know that artists can and
do cause much grief in this respect. The father of a good friend is a
literary novelist of note, famous (as my father taught me long ago,
"there's a fine line between fame and notoriety") for putting the people he
knows in his many novels. His ex-wives in particular have been quite vocal
on the subject, hurt feelings, and all the rest. None, to my knowledge,
have yet ventured into public or print to complain about it, however, but
of course they're free to do so. There's a perennial market for memoirs and
biography that elucidate these very aspects of a writer's work and life.

This ethical discussion certainly has a place on p-list, in my opinon -- it
just needs to be a discussion, with give-and-take, and mutual respect for
the various positions raised. I'm sure that reasonable people could
disagree and discuss the way real people have been reflected in the
characters of the novelists mentioned below, and we could in theory have a
sane discussion of what Jules has told us about himself and Chrissie
relative to Pynchon's novels. Jules doesn't appear to be ready for that
polite discussion, unfortunately, and instead seems to have other motives
for doing what he's doing on this list. Maybe somebody will be able to talk
with Chrissie directly one of these days and hear what she has to say
directly, without the Jules filter. That would be fascinating -- and that's
what I hoped I would find in Lineland.

Thanks,
Doug

At 7:13 PM 7/8/97, Vaska wrote:
>For those who'd like to know more about this, or why it might even deserve
>some thought in the first place, there is Louise Desalvo's _Conceived With
>Malice_ [1995], where she very sensitively, and without dismissing the work
>of any of the writers she tackles, looks at the novels of Virginia Wolf, her
>husband Leonard, D.H. Lawrence, Djuna Barnes and Henry Miller to think
>through some of the real complexities of what has to be considered when we
>talk about the ethics of art.  Or even about the humbler version of that
>very broad subject: the ethical core of a particular writer's work.


D O U G  M I L L I S O N ||||||||||| millison at online-journalist.com
     Today in history (8 July 97):  951. Paris was founded.