death of the author

[Paul Mackin]

Several people lately have observed that it is easier to be nasty over
the p-list than in a face-to-face encounter, which seems well worth
reminding ourselves of so long as it doesn't lead to the conclusion
that we should make what we write here more like face-to-face chit chat
when it seems to me the atmosphere of the p-list might
tend too much to that already, which could possibly  be one of
the causes leading to the kinds of problems people have been 
complaining so much about lately. So let me bore you all for a moment with
a fantasy I just had. I know it could never happen and maybe shouldn't
but just what if we were able to condition ourselves  to treat the 
vituperation and other often provocative stuff we read here, full of sexual
imagery and what have you, not as a personal encounter with anyone
but for all the world as something we might be reading it in a book,
say a book like Gravity's Rainbow only  not so well written naturally.,
so that when we came to a place where one angry person says,
"You're a bastard," and another replies, "And you're a bitch,"
we wouldn't be so apt to think that we personally are being called a
bastard or a bitch but that it's only characters in the story.  In other
words nobody shouts back at Pynchon that he's not a nice man 
(which he's probably not) when something offensive comes along but
continues on enjoying the passage or finding it boring and wrong headed
and moving on to something else. Now, wouldn't that be nice? 

									P.