Is it OK to be a Luddite?

[Otto]

>
> >From: "Otto"
> >
> >He doesn't drop anything. He stays on topic from the first to the last
> >sentence.
>
> Otto Darling,  If P were a student in my
> class I would introduce him to an outline. He's very
> funny, witty, challanging, brilliant even, but he does not stay on topic.
> I'm laughing as I type this. No darling, Malign
> is right to complain. He is, however, as Charles Clerc
> says in Mason & Dixon & Pynchon, "a world-class researcher" (Cler.39).
>
> >
> > > I have no idea who he imagines these sci/fi geniuses to be, but a list
> >of
> > > the
> > > "paralyzed" mainstream writers working in the fifties would without
> > > exhaustion include: Faulkner, Thomas Mann, Nabokov, Celine, Beckett,
> > > Flannery
> > > O'Conner, James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, John Updike, Terry Southern,
> >Ralph
> > > Ellison, Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and
Flann
> > > O'Brien.
> > >
> >
> >This is your list -- none of those names can be found in the essay.
> >Beckett, Nabokov and Mailer are no mainstream -- for me they could be the
> >exceptions Pynchon is speaking about.
>
>
> Well let us hope that Faulkner is also on that exceptions list.
>
> Maybe you should read a little SF, for
> >example the recently mentioned Frank Herbert or the Strugatzkis, to get
the
> >idea. I could name several great SF-authors I consider far more important
> >than Th. Mann.
>
> hmmmmmm, nothing against sci-fiers, but Mann better be
> on that list too. Don't you think?

Terrance Darling,

no, I've never met anybody of my generation who has read a book of him, I
gave him up after several attempts. To me he's absolutely uninteresting,
wasted time.

Please could you explain why P doesn't stay on topic? What, other than
technophobia, is the topic here?

Otto