The armchair critic

[jbor]

Derek,

You've said your piece, and fair enough. However, if someone had been
labelling you publically as a Holocaust-denier continuously for -- what --
two years now since he first started on it? then how would *you* feel about
it?

millison's not even talking about what is depicted in GR any more: we agree
on that. He's splitting hairs over what to *call* it, and this is nothing
more than pettiness and petulance on his part. To him the use of Dora
prisoners as labour at the Mittelwerke represents "the Holocaust" and that's
all there is to it. To me, Dora was a labour camp. I'm happy to change the
*statement* of my point to one about the absence of *the Shoah* from GR's
narrative, even making a note in the margin that there is a depiction of
"foreign prisoners" from Dora working and dying at the Mittelwerke, if it
will make him happy. And, if that was all the dispute was about then I would
have left it alone back in 1998. But he has kept harping on and on about
Holocaust-denier rhetoric and neo-Nazis, and me casting Pynchon as a
Holocaust-denier, endlessly so. He even made insinuations in *his* posts to
Ken McVay about Holocaust-denial.

When millison recently asserted that, in his world, saying someone has
written or said something which sounds bigoted or racist is a "fancier way
to call somebody a bigot"


>From: Doug Millison <millison at online-journalist.com>
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: GRGR Finale Re: Homophobia in GR?
>Date: Sun, Sep 10, 2000, 1:15 PM

then we might assume it to be a strategy he condones, and practises himself,
and that it could safely be said to apply to his assertion that mine is "the
kind of rhetoric Holocaust-deniers use" as well. Libel is a prosecutable
offence, and a legal friend tells me I have a pretty solid case against the
creep, more so now. I wouldn't bother, even though he *is* a creep, but the
insult to me, at first, was great. I take Ken McVay's point that his attacks
are "just plain silly, and grossly unfair to the position" I've expressed.
All I've asked for from millison is an apology for offence caused, and which
he has refused to give. Whether or not he meant to libel me (and he *did*
mean to) all he had to do was apologise for the offence he caused. This *is*
the only source of dispute for me: I couldn't give a stuff about the
moralising interpretations millison keeps trying to impose on Pynchon's
work.

Finally, it seems odd to me that you would want to suppress Ken McVay's
opinions, or that you seem to think the Holocaust and its interpretation is
a subject not worth discussing. Ken certainly didn't seem to mind being
asked what he thought, or allowing his comments to be published here. And,
in fact, it was another lister who suggested the idea, so you are a bit
above yourself when you presume to speak for "the entire list". I suppose
you have every right to chip in with your tedious complaints and snipes, and
I can just delete your no-content posts as I usually do. I can also, if I
want, respond to them, and this is one such.



----------
>From: "Derek C. Maus" <dmaus at email.unc.edu>
>To: Pynchon List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Re: appealing to Doug/rj
>Date: Thu, Oct 5, 2000, 3:09 AM
>

>
> As grip(p)ing as this correspondence has been--and I'm sure Mr. McVay is
> just super-pleased to be involved in it now--I absolutely, positvely, 100%
> no longer fail to see how this has any interest to the entire list in any
> way. I agree with Otto that the links you've both been providing as part
> of this endless back-and-forth have occasionally been interesting to
> explore, but, speaking only for myself, I'm so unbelievably tired of this
> mutual sniping about an issue that it seems to me the two of you will
> never agree on--it seems to me as much because of the person you're
> arguing with as anythin--that I'd just like to make one final impassioned
> plea to take this offlist PLEASE. I don't have any desire to be a list
> nanny or whatever else, and you're both certainly welcome to continue this
> all you want, but it's really, really, really, really boring and
> ridiculous at this point.