Obvious references

[Paul Mackin]

On Thu, 3 Dec 1998 Cchoskin at aol.com wrote: (about pop culture references)

> Would like to see more discussion about the why of the reference
> than the what. 

Sounds constructive enough to try. But once you decided he had definitely
alighted on something like the Baudrillardian conjecture to play with then
you have to come to some conclusion as to whether he's illustrating it or
making fun it so that the next conclusion might well be that the
proposition is undecidable. A less ambitious approach could be to try to
exhaustively list the many themes or obsessions as possible that seem to
recur from book to book--things like talking animals and other
nonhuman objects, love slaves in chains, tough women possibily lesbian
(yes, rj, he's definitely wants us to ask), etc., etc.
Wonder if it would be a long list or a short list????

			P.