answering Terrance

[Henry Mu]

Ah, Musikar... I used to be Musikar...

----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Millison" <millison at online-journalist.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2001 2:18 PM
Subject: answering Terrance


> Terrance,
>
> You are not a fascist,
> and you're not the Pynchon-L moderator, either.
>
> Somebody -- it may have even been Musikar -- said on Pynchon-L a long time
> ago,before you got here, when somebody -- it may have even been me --
> complained that other P-listers weren't sticking to the topic, that this
> forum represents different things for different people, something to the
> effect that for some it's a genteel literary discussion focused on Pynchon
> and for others it's a balls-out drunken party for people who love Pynchon.
> In the past nearly 5 years, I've come to see the truth in that.
>
> Take, "Morris" for example, a great example of the P-list as a place to
> spew obscenity and provoke argument with insult, along with our darling
> Malign-- Pynchon-L seems to be a place where "Morris" can come home after
> too many drinks (that's often his excuse, isn't it) and crow about the
> bombing and tell anybody he wants to to get fucked, probably because his
> wife and his boss have his balls in such a clamp he's got no place else to
> spew when he's drunk.  There are a few, very few, who seem to see
Pynchon-L
> as a stuffy sort of literary discussion, politely ignoring what's
happening
> in the world outside, tossing around lit-crit cliches, elaborating and
> articulating rules for how to demonstrate this or that with P's texts,
> carrying on tedious arguments about genre classification of Pynchon's
works
> and the like, and avoiding at all costs relating the political/historical
> content of Pynchon's work to the world in which he writes.  There are some
> P-listers who use Pynchon as a springboard for all manner of comments, and
> who form a kind of loose-knit email community based on a common interest
> (Pynchon) even if everything they talk about here isn't  exclusively or
> even very often about Pynchon, and who sometimes even get together in the
> real world.  And people shift from group to group. Of the dozen or
frequent
> posters, I believe you will find it difficult to name one who doesn't fall
> into two or more of these categories, including yourself, non-fascist
> Terrance, and including me, from time to time.  Interesting stuff emerges
> from all of these groups, of course, and stupid nonsense as well.
>
> I'll continue to read Pynchon and when I see something worth responding to
> on Pynchon-L regarding his texts, I will; frankly, for my money you
haven't
> made a cogent or compelling point yet in the discussion of Mason & Dixon,
> but then you've rarely done that no matter how much Melville and Aristotle
> and undigested chunks of PhD. dissertations you regurgitate without
> successfully relating them to anything concrete that you have to say about
> Pynchon,  but I expect you have a different opinion of what you're
writing,
> and welcome to it.   I don't exactly see a stampede to elaborate on the
> comments you do make. Feel free to ignore my posts if you wish, or answer
> them as you will, I really don't care what you do. At one point I did
care,
> I held your hand when you telephoned me one night to complain about the
way
> rj/jbor/rjackson and "Morris" and kai and just about everybody else was
> calling you names and blasting you for posting gibberish to the P-list
> under multiple names, and I took the heat from that dogpack when I spoke
up
> and told them to stop it.  You could look it up in the archives if you've
> forgotten that but of course you haven't you ungrateful wretch.  I'll
> continue trying to make sense of your posts when I care to take the time
> and make the effort, but I'll probably continue to ignore most of them
> because you so often fail to make sense. You are a hypocritical whiner,
> quick to demand this and that, just as quick to perpetuate the same kind
of
> foolishness you complain about in others. So, as far as I'm concerned,
good
> buddy, and this goes for the rest of your whole sick anonymous crew --
> "Morris", Malign, "rj/rjackson/jbor/?", Fester, Scratchit, Dingleberry and
> the rest of you wankers --  adopting the kind of Navy diction I'd expect
> from Bodine, blow it out your homesick ass.
>
> Cordially and post-post-ironically,
> Doug "You Are Not A Fascist" Millison
>
>
>