pynchon-l-digest V2 #2199

[Doug Millison]

Thomas,

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that something in the "tone"
of what I write convinces you that I believe that I am " the only one who
knows exactly what is "the right thing to do".  This sounds similar to
Corathers' response -- it's not the content of what I write, but it's an
attitude that you infer from my tone.

Do you realize how vague this sounds -- more in the realm of your response,
your interpretation, than in the words, paragraphs, sentences that I write?

Can you be more specfic?  Is my writing too direct?  Not enough passive
voice, turgid, academic syntax? Too many colorful verbs and nouns? What?

But then I do qualify everything I write, as Quail noted, with words like
"if", "perhaps", "I believe", "in my opinion", "of course people are free
to interpret Pynchon the way they want to," up to and including many, many
instances of statements such as "I know others disagree and they are
welcome to their opinion, but this is what I believe".  Perhaps you feel
that because of these other, unidentifiable and unquantifiable qualities
you hear in my writing, you either don't notice the way I qualify my
statements, or perhaps what you're hearing in the "tone" (whatever that
might be) leads you believe that I don't mean it when I say "if",
"perhaps", "I believe", "in my opinion" and thus try to qualify my
statements and make them less dogmatic?  If that's so, we find ourselves in
the realm of your interpretations of what I write, your response.

That post I wrote about my experiences in US Army boot camp is not the
first time I've revealed personal history on Pynchon-L, by the way, in fact
I've written a lot about myself here over the past nearly 5 years.  Way too
much, according to some people -- Malign, for instance, who generally
chimes in with something slothrop666ian like "what a load of shit" or
"braying ass" (a phrase I alsofound in one of those slothrop666 posts in
the archives).

On this same topic of how people write on Pynchon-L, and while I've got
your attention, what do you think about people like Quail, who hector and
bluster and lard their posts with insults, epithets, and ad hominem
attacks, and at the same time scream about how reasonable and rational and
polite they are?  You apparently don't have any problem with this sort of
thing, as long as it's not me, or do I misunderstand you?  And you tend to
give Terrance a free pass, no matter how vile he becomes -- what's up with
that?  Play favorites if you like, but it's only fair to point out when
you're doing this, especially when you make it a point to comment on what I
write here on Pynchon-L.  If I misunderstand you or mischaracterize what
you're saying, I apologize.

Trying to figure out which P-listers are posting under which names has been
a sideline for regular contributors to the list as long as I've been here.
What makes you think that "David Morris" is the real name of the person who
posts from fqmorris at hotmail.com, I mean how do you know?  How do you know
that rj/rjackson/jbor/? is really "Robert Jackson"?  Do you know either of
them personally? I have no way of knowing what their real names might be.
But if you can personally vouch for them, on the basis of information
independent of what they've written here or offlist, I might reconsider.
But, in the final analysis,  I don't really care. I've been quite happy to
carry on Pynchon-L conversations with lots of anonymous folks, and if you'd
like I could demonstrate from the archives that as long as they refrain
from insulting me or egregiously distorting what I have to say I haven't
had any problem in maintaining cordial relations.  It's the anonymous folks
who just drop in and disrupt the conversation that irritate me, people who
make no commitment to the discussion and who just hide behind a fake name
to spew.

Thanks for taking the time to respond thoughtfully.

Cordially,
Doug




Doug Millison - Writer/Editor/Web Editorial Consultant
millison at online-journalist.com
www.Online-Journalist.com