Cultures and wars

[Paul Mackin]

I remember that unfortunately Susan  S. herself came down with the Big C soon after making the famous first pronouncement. At this point it's vague (for me). Did she then express public chagrin over using her own disease as a metaphor? The illness-as-metaphor essay (TB is to the 19th Century as Cancer is to the 20th) came later I think. Does anyone remember the sequence of events? Without actually looking them up? Once you start looking things up there's no stopping point. (One does want some cause and effect however :-))

Seems to me people can easily go overboard with extravagant metaphors. 
There is the tendency to include all manner of situation and event in the categories of obcenity, rape, cancer, etc. Can turn out bad, when the REAL THING is so abroad in the land. AIDS metaphors should  particularly be avoided. IMHO. (Sounds preachy I know.)

None the the above applies to great writers natch.

				P.


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From: 	MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu[SMTP:MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu]
Sent: 	Monday, March 10, 1997 8:07 PM
To: 	pynchon-l at waste.org

.
Subject: 	Re: Cultures and wars

I have just been silently enjoying the *Cultures and Wars* thread and it seems really 
funny to me that the *cancer* metaphor thing, if I remember correctly, spun out of a  
Susan Sontag quote early in the thread.  Someone quoted early Sontag where  she uses the 
*cancer* metaphor, and folks have been playing with it in funny and interesting ways.  
But nobody's mentioned Sontag's later position--isn't it in her *Illness as Metaphor* 
essay, where, I think, she slams the whole idea of using *cancer* metaphors to describe 
socio/political evils.  I'm very hot and cold on Sontag, and I'm not defending that 
position against using cancer metaphors (though the whole trope does become hackneyed 
pretty easily, as some of you all have already indicated).  I just think it's pretty funny that 
she inspired these riffs.

john m

*****************************
some of the riffs:


>Monte Davis writes:
>> [...]If cancer means explosive growth, exploitation of every
>> resource, and where-will-it-end, then:
>> 
>> Life is a cancer on the crust of the earth [...]
>> 
>> Humanity is a cancer among mammals,
>

>> Agriculture and cities and writing are a cancer on the much older way of
>> the hunter-gatherers,
>> 
>> And, yes, Western Europe was the focus of a cancer on "traditional"
>> civilization (however you want to define that).
>> [...]