Moaning has broken...

[Dave Monroe]

Okay, first off, do note I made sure this message
isn't  sent to both the list AND to the sender, not to
mention everybody he was responding to.  Second, and
being, I'm assuming, "one of those four or five
people," I nonetheless sympathize.  However, and,
esp., given my policy of posting as one discernable
entity, under my own name, I can't be any more than
one person myself, so ...  

I would note that no one here is obligated to respond
to anything anybody else is posting, so, if you don't
have the urge to post on anything already in play, you
can always start up another line of conversation. 
This really is more like a cocktail party than a
classroom, no one person either holds the floor or can
drown anyone else out, with the added attraction (?)
that everyone can hear--or not hear--everyone else
equally well.  We do have the potential for some
serious polyphony here ...

Anyone here can only "dominate" the List insofar as
everybody else allows him/her/them to do so, and can
only appear to do so by virtue of the paucity of posts
by anyone else.  Way I see it, the concerns should be,
are we getting quality information?  Are we having
productive discussion?  Are we at least enjoying
ourselves and each other here?  Ideally, are we
managing all of this all at once, as often as
possible?    And so forth ...

My obvious fascination is with just how much went into
those texts in the first place, and just what might
have gone into them.  Weisenberger's Gravity's Rainbow
Companion is the best of the lot, but, as we've shown
here, there is indeed much room in the margins of the
published Pynchoniana for good ol' basic research. 
And then there's the critical literature (of which, of
course, the Companions are a vital part) ...

Anyway, well, before I go on FAR too long on this ...
well, it took me a while to feel comfortable posting
here myself, and I'm still not all too sure of myself.
 I hope that, if some of us are being allowed to
dominate (by relative density, if nothing else) here,
it's not because anyone's actually intimidated here,
least of all by me, least of all an Ivy League
Master's ("thesis" vs. "doctorate"?) student ...  

Anyway, I notice a lot of nastiness over the past 24
hours or so, I do hope it's out of everybody's systems
by now, and that no one's ultimately bailed out of
here entirely because of it.  I do have one last long
post for the day on deck, one interrupted by a
potentially life/death matter, but if/when I post it,
I'll plead "by request" and "saves a trip to the
library," so ...

--- "Ivan Z. Cestero" <Ivan.Z.Cestero at Dartmouth.EDU>
wrote:

> i feel like there has been a mass witnessing of a
> dialoge between four or five people.

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