Frivolous literary note

[dennis grace]

Greetings all,

Especially you, Henry.  

>Wasn't gonna get into this until you called me "Mr. Musikar." Them's
>fightin' words, Mr. Grace. 

Damn, Henry.  You've been feeding on too steady a diet of Jules S.  I used
the Mr. out of respectful non-familiarity.  Course, as an ex-swabby, I can
understand where you might have misapprehended my words.  Henceforth, if you
prefer, you're always Henry to me.  'Kay?

>I considered the attributions and chose them for relevance, interest,
>and recognizability. 
>
>1. That KCBC was written by TRP is more important 
>than the character chosen to utter what I believe is a rather general
>maxim for TRP (are there any other maxims other than the PFPs?"

Lost me on PFP, but consider this:  Gravity's Rainbow offers no easily
t-shirted or bumper-stickered platitudes on the order of KCBC.  That was
part of my point. I'm not sure TRP would really want that phrase eternally
linked to himself--to his character, yeah, well, sure.  

Still, especially by the light of recent pynchon-l flame wars, I don't deny
the relevance of that platitude to this list.

>2. DON'T PANIC is most interestingly inscribed on both the actual and
>imaginary books, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" Anyone who
>wants to can look up Adams as the author.

Yep.  My point 'xactly.

>3. Husky Mariner is the best that I was able to come up with, and
>while perhaps less interesting, is more pleasant than "Sneering Cad"
>or "Incensed Rag."

I was not being snide.  I thought Husky Mariner was quite clever.  Sneering
Cad . . . hey, not bad.

>4. I can only attribute my A.E. Newman to laziness on my part. WMW is
>easily recognized by most of us as the periodic utterance of the
>fictional character A.E. Newman. Attributing WMW to the person who
>first put the phrase into Newman's mouth would have been more
>interesting, but would have required time to research who that person
>was (or perhaps someone on the list...), time that I didn't have at
>the time.

That's cool. If you look at what I said before, I have no quibble with
attributing WMW to AEN.
>> As for the irreality of attributing such lines to the characters,
>> consider Mr. Musikar's remaining two sig lines.  He attributes
>> "DON'T PANIC" to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a fictional
>> creation of Douglas Adams; he attributes "What, me worry?" to A.E.
>> Newman, a fictional creation of somebody at MAD magazine.  Such
>> attributions are not unusual.

Cordially, 
the Sneering Cad.

"Oh God comma I abhor self-consciousness."  --JB