list future? Pynchon speaks!

[Doug Millison]

At 8:35 PM 7/22/97, Paul Mackin wrote:
>Put some listmember on the spot to RESPONSIBLY tell the rest of
>us what GOES on the list and what doesn't.
(snip)
>Now, the only question is, who's got the guts to volunteer?

I think I see what you're getting at. I designed, and my company put on, a
series of industry conferences (attracting about 1,000 attendees each) a
couple of years ago that featured expert panels and rather than letting
them degenerate into talking-head-and-slide-show commercials for the
panelists' various employers, I arranged for take-no-prisoners-accept-no-BS
moderators play Oprah/Donahue (tv talk show hosts, for non U.S. TV viewers)
to keep the discussion flowing, and to involve the audience in the experts'
discussion.

In that sense, a moderated p-list, with experts to suggest topics and keep
the flow going, cutting people off when they get too mouthy, that makes
sense -- but then, isn't that what we have on the list now, within the
parameters of the MDMD at least, with the excellent, prepared notes and
questions and outlines and commentaries to guide our discussion, and such
articulate experts to contribute their observations?

In the few months I've been on the list, it seems that it's only when
participants stray from the actual book and Pynchon discussion that
disagreement arises about which posts are interesting and which aren't, and
which threads have gone on too long (and I know I'm guilty on that score on
at least one occasion; I also observe that I'm not alone in such an
indulgence, if not on that particular topic then on others).  I  don't know
if it's guts that's needed as much as a set of rules to accomplish what
Paul suggests, and how to begin defining rules beyond the existing FAQ,
well, that seems a thorny question to me.

Back to M&D. Pynchon has provided answers, or at least questions, for just
about everything, hasn't he?

Is the list, in fact, in need of someone to play the role Maskelyne
imagines (just after the marvelous image of "Maidens down by the Bridge,
who are said to possess Rouge-Boxes with miniature mirrors...that allow
them to View their Features, tho' one at a Time. All that is not thus in
Fragments, is Invisible.") Mason playing:

129.9  "And if my Character as well be experiencing some like 'Morphosis,
some Veering into Error, how am I to know? Perhaps you are sent, upon this
Anti-Etesian Wind unbearable, as Correction,-- to act as my moral
Regulator.-- How we've all long'd for one of those, hey?"




D O U G  M I L L I S O N ||||||||||| millison at online-journalist.com