literary discussion (WAS "use" of sources)

[Jules Siegel]

I said I would no longer respond to any further comments from Doug Millison,
but since he's changed his tone somewhat, I am going to take the chance of
boring many by answering him in a similar tone.

At 09:31 AM 07/9/97 -0800, millison at online-journalist.com (Doug Millison) wrote:

>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.

This is not true. I have tried to answer every one of your questions as
reasonably as possible, as I try with almost all other messages directed to
me. I have never insulted you. All I did was gently kid you once or twice.
If you show me one case in which I attacked and insulted a reasonable
question or questioner who had not used insulting terms such as "literary
parasite," I will publically apologize.

>Then you tell us that your motive all along has been to provoke and thus
develop more material for more articles and books.

It wasn't my motive all along. After Andrew Dinn invited me to contribute, I
went through two months of gratuitous attacks in October and November and
realized at the end that I had enough material for a book. When the book was
published, I then was overwhelmed with insulting messages that used words
such as pimp, prostitute, parasite, plagiarist, liar, fraud, bastard, hack,
ass and so on, almost all from subscribers who had not read the book, were
not quoted in it and were not present when the interaction took place. In
almost every case, I replied reasonably, if vehemently, and was deluged with
further irrational abuse, including a monentarily heart-stopping fake bomb
threat and a letter to my publisher threatening to sue him because I had
replied angrily to one especially vicious torrent.

I then began to see that the insults were exactly the kind of behavior that
James Clark Moloney MD had predicted would proceed from the psychological
damage industrial societies inflict on their children. The people who were
attacking me were acting like the human robots he described to Chrissie and
me when we met him in Guadalajara in 1973. Dr. Moloney was one of the
founders of La Leche League. He asked me to try to bring his ideas to a
wider audience. The Human Robot is one part of my attempt to do so.

I actually managed to get his theories on breastfeeding, toilet training and
repression of infantile sexuality into "The Female Ego," an article Playboy
published in 1978. I believe this was one of the first --if not the first --
serious mentions of children in the history of the magazine. As I wrote in
the introduction to Lineland, Playboy Press commissioned a book called The
Human Robot, but they got out of the book publishing business before my
manuscript was due and sold all the existing contracts to Putnam, which
cancelled all sight unseen and then sued the authors for the advances.

After a while this time around on pynchon-l, I decided to take a more
philosophical view of the abuse and it occurred to me that it would make
fascinating documentary illustrations for Moloney's theories. This is not my
main motive in posting provocative ideas and interpretations. I find the
responses and discussions quite entertaining. The minutae here can get
boring. As you can see in the responses, there are those who enjoy the
interplay as much as I do. Some are also capable of realizing that postings
such as "At the Bar" are humorous, as are most of my put-downs of annoying
gnats.

>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.

This is quite true. I also feel that the kind of irrational negativity that
have characterized some Internet communities is now becoming passé and
people are demanding more civilized behavior. It's one thing to question
someone's credentials, motives and views. It's quite another to then reject
any attempts to defend them as mere self-serving promotion. It very quickly
reaches the point of mere heckling. This does get me annoyed and I do become
more vehement, as one might expect. When you look through the archives and
compare the insults I've received with both the supposed provocations and my
responses, I think you'll understand my exasperation.

One person who actually did so then wrote to me privately apologizing for
having unfairly criticized me. We now have a very fulfilling correspondence.
The person asked for a review copy of Lineland and wrote some very favorable
remarks. A review is now being written. My grammar is a bit awkward here
because I am avoiding revealing the person's sex. I will see if I can get
permission to post the apology.

In your case, especially, I attempted to deal with each of your complaints
in a reasonable manner, but you were never satisfied and, until today,
repeated your accusations and negative probing in almost the same words in
something like a dozen messages. I don't want to go back over them and pull
out the parts that offended me. I'd say that you could compare their tone
with the more civilized attitude you now show and decide for yourself if you
were not, perhaps, out of line.


--Jules Siegel Apdo 1764 Cancun QR 77501
http://www.yucatanweb.com/siegel/jsiegel.htm