Lurkers ARE particpating

[Jane Sweet]

I think lurkers have as much right to complain as members
that post substantially and regularly. That being said, if
only we might also enjoy a substantive argument about
Pynchon from those that are posting; clearly there are
significant differences here. And nearly all of these
disagreements ultimately have their source in different
readings of Pynchon.  

But there's a big difference between passion for a text or
subject or author and madness. I think members here are too
well endowed with substantive arguments to resort to such
obstinate folly. To call your opponent's argument an absurd
insipid and tedious  misreading of the text, is one thing;
to call your opponent mad or stupid is quite another. We
have, most of us, faced our share of exasperating comments
and nastiness, 
and I don't think it's fair to  single out for ridicule a
single member of the list.  When one makes a passionate
argument, one must expect passionate disagreement. But to
denigrate someone's reading skills or thinking or to argue
that someone's views are indicative of an incompetence that
poses a danger to constructive discourse or to foolishly
accuse someone of biases that they have a long personal
history of fighting or suggest deep-seated psychological 
pathology as the root of someone's passionate disagreement,
bespeaks of desperation on the part of the accuser - it
suggests that the accuser's command of his/her own arguments
is so feeble that he/she must resort to  empty rhetorical
tricks in an attempt to alienate from his opponent any 
support he might have. It seems to me that there is not a
member of this list so inept as to need be so  desperate, as
all the members here, on brighter days have proven a very
talented lot who've made arguments with a good  deal of
evidence and a good deal of logic. I participate on this
list because I want to learn. I learn a lot. I suspect that
the majority of the participants here are also here  to
learn. What are we learning now? I have always delighted in
reading and participating in spirited discussion. At times 
tempers are frayed, we lose our cool, but  that only proves 
that we are passionate about our subject. It's disappointing
to see the discussion break down into ad hominem insults,
but from the start of this thread I think there was a
discrepancy in the tone taken by the main participants. I
think we will have to refrain from all of the little, even
subtle, insults, jibes, sparks, at least for the time
being.  

Jane