JS

[Doug Millison]

Apparently, literary studies at the university level don't include 
courses on journalistic ethics. There'd be nothing to object to 
regarding JS's writings about Pynchon if JS did in fact own up to his 
biases, published under the rubric of literary criticism, or properly 
identified his writings as fiction, instead of presenting them (and 
defending them, rather hysterically and in the presence of 
substantial evidence to the contrary, as he has on Pynchon-L) as 
objective reporting.  I've read JS closely, and I've yet to find the 
passages that reveal that JS "is biased and self-serving in a very 
up-front and tongue-in-cheek way."  While he does freely admit  his 
cuckold status and frosts his reports with a disarming and smarmy 
congeniality,  JS tends to hide his anti-Pynchon biases by putting 
putting words in his ex-wife's mouth,  making uncorroborated claims 
about Pynchon that nobody can challenge, and using the other hack 
journalism tactics I mentioned earlier.

Consider that, according to JS's Playboy article, only he and Pynchon 
were in that Manhattan Beach apartment in their meetings together, 
nobody else was present; thus, in the absence of corroboration or 
denial from Pynchon, it's impossible to know if Pynchon made the 
statements or took the actions that JS attributes to him.  We cannot 
know, as JS' claims,  that Pynchon claimed, with regard to an early 
draft of GR, that he had no idea what he had written; beginning in 
the Playboy article and continuing on the P-list, in Lineland, and in 
subsequent writings, JS has insisted this had something to do with 
drugs.  Maybe so, maybe not. We can only trust JS when he says this 
is true -- in other words, put our trust in a hack journalist who has 
demonstrated again and again that his primary goal is to feather his 
own nest and to insult an old friend. Despite the lack of 
corroboration, and ignoring JS's very obvious program of trying to 
damage Pynchon's reputation (which became clear in his P-list assault 
and with the publication of Lineland and subsequent articles), JS's 
unchallenged report has been repeated ad infinitum by other 
journalists, P-list newbies, etc., taking on a life of its own, 
accepted as "true" simply because JS wrote it and Playboy published 
it.

It's possible that, at some future moment, more biographical 
information will surface about Pynchon, that other friends of his 
will offer insights that would tend to support what JS has reported. 
Until then, JS's hack journalist tactics and obvious bitterness and 
resentment make it difficult to accept his statements about Pynchon.

Given the close readings and multifaceted interpretations that rj can 
bring to Pynchon's texts, it's disappointing to see him swallow JS's 
ejaculations so uncritically.

-Doug

At 10:30 PM +1000 6/29/00, jbor wrote:
>  Mackin:
>  > While Lineland was IMHO the poorest excuse for a nonbook I've ever
>>  encountered, the Playboy piece was of a completely different order. Well
>>  written and interesting. This is not to say it may not be biased and self
>>  serving at least to some degree.
>snip
>
>Certainly, but entertaining enough, as you say, and it is biased and
>self-serving in a very up-front and tongue-in-cheek way, especially
>considering the publication context! I'm not so sure that some "serious"
>critics aren't just as or more so guilty of bias and self-service at
>Pynchon's expense, and in contexts which are far more insidious, when they
>purport to uncover finite and unequivocal meanings in the texts which
>thereby prove that Pynchon the man is a God-fearing gun-totin' Nazi-hunting
>star spangled patriot or whatever. It's the same game however it's played.
>
>best
>

-- 

d  o  u  g    m  i  l  l  i  s  o  n  <http://www.online-journalist.com>