Plist ethos

[dennis grace]

Following Tom's extrapolation:

>> In the end, the photos are a red herring anyway. It's the
>> *biography* I wonder about. At 60, TRP&Co. have got to be
>> considering the final phases of a masterfully executed literary
>> career which will have to include a biography of some sort, no doubt
>> with some photos (but maybe not!), that answers all of those other
>> questions that I, for one, am dying to learn more about. 
<snip>

Henry bets

>none of the above happens. No bio, auto or authorized. No 
>papers/computer files. Or maybe the biggest shock of all: he been 
>working on a secret television series for years, but blah blah blah. 
>What I want to know is: who gets the frozen head?

1)  Assuming TRP makes it to the Ripe Old Age-group, he'll probably
eventually sell his notes and rough drafts and such.  The Harry Ransom
Center (here at UT) and other Library of Congress wannabees pay Big Bucks
for such supposed writings-in-progress.  I know writers who have actually
begun GENERATING rough drafts and notes in order to cash in--that'll put a
knot in their historico-methodical tails, eh boys and girls?  

2)  The "biggest shock of all" is that TRP is a group mind, an effort by
several unlikely writers and sundry professionals in an unlikelier
combination creating dense, convoluted, multifarious, paranoid works for
reasons that are now lost but which were themselves originally dense,
convoluted, multifarious, and paranoid as well as government sponsored.
Remember the lessons of Mikhail Bakhtin: transgression of the state
ultimately serves the state.

3)  I can recall only one television program which could have been a TRP
production:  Dinosaurs.  I mean:  an acronym formed around We Are Right, a
TV news commentator named Howard Handupme, a national megaholiday based on
the invention of the refrigerator, and a teacher who refutes the need for
conservation of natural resources with the argument, "There will always be
more. That's what 'more' means."  Und, so, and weiter.  If this wasn't TRP,
it shoulda been.

4)  Corollary to point 2:  which head?

Don't act so surprised. You all knew TRP was a plot. Come on, who names
their kid Ruggles?

dgg
_____________________________
Dennis Grace
University of Texas at Austin
English Department
Recovering Medievalist
amazing at mail.utexas.edu

Things are more like they are today than they have ever been before.
                                                  --Dwight D. Eisenhower

(Don't Republicans say just the cutest things?)