blicero's sexuality

[jbor]

----------
>From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
>

> No, Eddins defines what he means when he uses the term
> perverse,

Yes, that's right.

>no what it means
> as part of some apparently absolute natural order.

In doing so he also defines what he thinks the "natural order" is, or should
be. Obviously, when he defines "perversity" he sets it outside what he
considers to be the "natural order". Please don't distort my words.

> Those are
> your misreadings of his text, if you have read it.

Well, no. Those are my comments on the brief quotes from Eddins provided by
Kai and yourself, my memory of reading parts of Eddins' book several years
ago, and on what you have been trying to claim as "the best reading of
Blicero to date".

> He never
> makes this claim.

What claim? All I said was that he defines the terms and then superimposes
them on the text, claiming them *as the text's* definitions.

> Also, the quote that Kai provided, out of
> context, the second sentence of the concluding paragraph of
> the study of Blicero as a character in GR, the one that you
> have taken your binary from-- human imagination/natural
> instinct-- is a distortion of the text as I have explained.

Actually, the binary was constructed by Eddins in the paragraph *you* cited:

    Buggery, however, is only the starting point of Blicero's
    violations. By dressing as a women with artificial genitalia
    fashioned from various synthetics and by interdicting the
    natural attraction between Gottfried and Kaje, Blicero is
    undertaking to found a competing sexual order, one that is
    entirely the product of human imagination rather than the
    natural instincts [ ... ]

Is Eddins distorting his own text?

> I have made the distinction and it's not too difficult to
> see if you are willing to
> open your mind just a bit,

So, because I don't accept what was essentially a rhetorical sleight of hand
on your part I'm narrow-minded?

> but I think the point here, as
> usual, is to attack the person that presents ideas, and not
> the ideas themselves. So Kai has audacity to label a scholar
> a homophobe.

No, he asked, quite reasonably I think, whether the *interpretation* of
Blicero's sexuality offered by Eddins was stuffy and homophobic. I think the
point here is, as usual, that you become unreasonably hostile and
antagonistic and start calling people narrow-minded and cancerous when they
disagree with you.

> You have the chutzpah to say that a review of
> GR that fails to address the narratology of  Enzian reflects
> the Waspishness bias of its author.

Well, no. One of my criticisms of that review was that the reviewer didn't
seem to think enough of Enzian's protagonism in the novel to even
acknowledge it, and that this might indeed be down to the WASPish mindset he
brought into the novel.

The rest of the your remarks were offensive and uncalled for, and I have
snipped them.

best