Awestrop, man your filters!

[Jules Siegel]

At 06:20 AM 05/2/97 -0600, awestrop at crl.com (Alan Westrope) wrote:

>Sure, in the March '77 Playboy, p. 3.  BTW, I've actually *owned*
>this issue since B/4 I joined the list...set me back a whopping
>$2.49 at a used book/magazine store.  I was amused when people
>started whining here that Jules' article had been removed from
>Andrew's site, then Jules posted about how he had requested the
>removal because his copyright was being infringed, then -- well,
>let's just say that much of the ensuing traffic resembles nothing
>so much as a kitchen table laden with pots and kettles, each
>calling the others "kitchen utensils of colour."

Flinstones, observe: This is a model of what a good amateur literary insult
can be. My hat's off to you, Awestrop. I like the kitchen utensils of colour
a lot. British spelling always sounds so classy. You can almost hear it on
the phone when they talk to you. The Times of London made me feel quite
elevated just by the accent.

Dale has asked me to be less aggressive in responding to insults on
pynchon-l. He thinks it's bad PR. Janelle didn't respond to his last e-mail
offering to send her a copy of the Lineland galleys. The original was being
avidly passed around at the Wired offices when it disappeared. Some say that
secret pynchon-l operatives removed it; others that it was stolen by a
selfish individual who heard that spiral-bound Advance Proofs were being
offered on pynchon-l for $100 the copy.

He's hoping Janelle will come to Philadelphia and interview him, too,
although I would imagine it would be better if they met secretly somewhere
like Chicago, as Dale has a very beautiful and intelligent lady friend who
might do something unfortunate to his anatomy. She works in Medical
Transplants. Really.

Since Awestrop has a filter sluicing me down the trash, I think this will be
a great opportunity to deride him behind his back. [Insert emoticon of Jules
giving Awstrop a tremendous wet fart Bronx cheer]. Begin flaming for too
many anal insults. I'm counting two enema jokes and now a wet fart.

The picture is a complete forgery. It's not me. My photograph has never been
published anywhere. As you will see from my online resume, URL below, I
began my career in the 4th Military Intelligence Detachment, United States
Armed Forces, Korea. Military intelligence operatives were absolutely
forbidden in those day to have their photographs published. Those of you who
saw "The English Patient" will understand why. We do need our thumbs.

Then came John LeCarré, another shameless self-promoter, and being MI became
a path to literary fortune, but you had to have a photograph for the back
cover. Things like this caused the Russians to obtain the secrets of the
atomic bomb, thereby losing the Cold War (but not right away), and making it
necessary for Harry S Truman, a saintly liberal, to execute Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg for being famous. Maybe it was Eisenhower who did it. But that
couldn't be right, because Richard Nixon called him a conscious agent of the
communist conspiracy to keep him from becoming famous too, I think. I
forget. Well they are dead. We do know that. Some things in life are certain
and death is one of them. Wait a minute...?

I myself never sold out like that, preferring honor to fortune. Now that I
have finally retired, I am at liberty to tell some of the truth about my
identity. Since it's Playboy policy *always* to publish an author photograph
just as they *must* label an article "article," my former literary agent,
Candida Donadio, hired an actor to impersonate me. Playboy never knew the
difference. I wish she had the good sense to hire one who took more
flattering pictures of my stand-in, though. Well, there's a reason Thomas
Pynchon dropped her, isn't there?

Are those Flinstone Aryan Nation guys cyberpunks? That stuff reads like
graffitti in the stockyards. You can almost smell it coming across the screen.

Awestrop, man your filters! Pynchon-L is under attack by cyberpunks with
electric pixel goo and digital switchblade knives. Protect us!

I'm so fwightened. Help me. Mommy! Bad men (or neo-Nazi feminists in drag)
are here writing secret CODE messages in CYBERTALK and I'm SCARED! Really
SCARED!

Someone just called them Midwestern Pinheads. Glad I didn't. And now Craig
Clark is leaving. Oh, no! We are LOST. They'll get us now.

--
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