Apology

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

rj wrote:
> 
> TF
> > "Critical pluralism" is an approach that emphasizes the
> > potential
> > usefulness of a variety of interpretive theories without
> > giving exclusive
> > emphasis to any single point of view. It encourages mutual
> > understanding
> > and dialogue rather than hostile conflict between adherents
> > of different
> > theories.
> 
> Except that some of those interpretive theories claim exclusive
> privilege over textual analysis, and arose in direct and antagonistic
> opposition to some of the others. "Critical pluralism" as you define it
> here, apart from the wishy-washy moralising (which is your own), isn't
> so far from what postmodernist critiques are advocating, except that
> those critiques recognise and foreground the contradictions, internal
> and overt, within critical modes. In this sense they are
> anti-rationalist, as is Pynchon's fiction (itself comprising a series of
> postmodernist critiques), acknowledging the contradictions and
> oppositions yet still willing to consider and accommodate their yield.
> 
> > I hope the definition of critical pluralism above will make
> > my meaning clear.
> 
> No, it doesn't.
> 
> > This is probably the case and I recognize that I am more
> > familiar with the terms you use than you are with the ones I
> > use. This is ONLY true because the terms you use share
> > common and current use in literary criticism, while the
> > terms I use are often more common to philosophy.
> 
> I see. So, set against my intellectual deficiency is your
> all-encompassing wisdom and beneficience. Thank you so much for your
> condescension, Terrance.
> 
> > Yes, I understand this term "reader" and I understand what
> > you mean by the author as reader and that Pynchon reads
> > history through his own text. I am not always happy with
> > these terms and I don't always agree with the concepts that
> > they carry, for example, as to the term "text",  even in its
> > most comprehensive sense, I reject the idea that the world
> > is a "text." I reject it on philosophical grounds and not as
> > a useful term for certain critical approaches.
> 
> I have not used the word "text" in this sense in this exchange.
> 
> > Conflating creativity with divine creation (here I
> > assume you mean the literary creativity of the author or
> > artist and not the reader, though one could make both
> > arguments) involves artist and some sort of god or
> > inspiration.
> 
> No. It refers to the way some critics approach fiction as if it were
> scripture.
> 
> > I have studied the text closely and I
> > have a clear and coherent argument that supports my claims.
> 
> Don't know about that "clear and coherent" there, Jackson.
> 
> > I think we are not polarized and I think
> > that we can come to an agreement on this issue
> 
> Why is it necessary that we agree?
> 
> > Your statement was:
> 
> The "statement" which you claim is an unfair and inaccurate attack has
> gone from a sentence to a whole passage. You still haven't clarified why
> you believe (all of?) it to be unfair or inaccurate, nor have you
> offered examples and actual argument to support your contention.
> 
> >
> > OK, but can you explain what you mean by machine "using" (or
> > what ever term works) a man?
> 
> Oh good grief. It's a fairly simple point. Once upon a time, a man who
> learnt to use an object as a hammer thereby gave himself an advantage
> over other men. Now, the man who does not learn to use that hammer is at
> an acute disadvantage. The hammer's existence and use now precede and
> define what it is to be human. This is the shift.
> 
> best

If good and ill nature equally operated upon Machines and
Man, I might have saved my self the trouble of this Apology;
for it is manifest in my posts, especially these recent
posts to P-L, that my statements, or should I say, the
statements of the Machine that uses me, have contributed to
the paranoia of list members. 
Before I conclude my Apology, I find I am forced, as by a
personal paranoid Hal, to offer a little humor. Even a
paranoid can take some solace in this most useful gift of
our machine nature, for when humor enters the room, even a
paranoid crank angry with the happiness of summer days will
crack a smile before pulling his paranoid puss back into his
shell. Now while it is true, that in certain island nations
I have visited, the pride, pedantry, and ill manners of the
natives there prevent them form taking humor in any way
humorous, but insist on being lashed with it, though they
arrogantly insist the blows of humor too weak, because they
think of themselves as closer to the Machine than the rest
of mere mortals, and thus insensible to pleasantries,
ribbing, kidding, merriment, and all the amusements of
common men and women everywhere in the great, wide,
wonderful, and comical world, but in almost every other part
of the world I have visited, men and woman laugh and have a
sense of humor, the best defense against paranoid machines
and almost every sickness that man is prone to.