literary discussion (WAS "use" of sources)

[Doug Millison]

Imagine what would have happened had you published the meat of Lineland --
the rehashing of your Playboy article plus the new stuff you added in the
book -- as an article in the New York Review of Books, a publication
notable for its contentious, bitchy essays which are then vigorously
debated by the various interested parties in the Letters section of the
magazine in subsequent issues.

It's safe to say that your assertions would have been questioned and
discussed in some detail, and the discussion would have gone through the
NYRB editorial filter. The whole process would have proceeded more slowly,
and more decorously, than our discussion here on pynchon-l, and I'm sure
your claims would have been subjected to even more rigorous scrutiny. But
all the same questions -- about your credibility, the accuracy of your
reporting, whether your claims about influences in Pynchon's novels and the
various things you've had to say about their historical accuracy make sense
based on what's seen in the novels, and so on, would have been raised,
because they are precisely the kind of questions that come up in literary
discussion.

Based on what I've seen in your posts, I don't believe that's the kind of
discussion you want on pynchon-l. When your assertions are questioned,
instead of engaging them intelligently, you attack and insult. Then you
tell us that your motive all along has been to provoke and thus develop
more material for more articles and books.

I suggest that, as a relative newcomer to the Internet, you still have a
lot to learn about the virtual communities we've been creating on the
Internet for the past several years.

Good luck,
Doug


D O U G  M I L L I S O N ||||||||||| millison at online-journalist.com
Today in history (9 July):  1595: Johannes Kepler discovered the perfect
geometric solid  "construction of universe."