MDMD: The Crime of Anonymity

[Paul Mackin]

Yes, the phrase is thick with irony. At best anonymity is a crime only in
the secondary sense of being an attempt to aid and abet those few whose
pronouncements might truly threaten the state (these pronouncements being
the primary crime)--to aid and abet them in remaining free to pursue their
waywardness.. It is like the popular American crime (according to some
lights) of asserting one's fifth amendment right against self-incrimination.
However the sad crime of anonymity I would have to say is that committed by
the great majority, who do not choose to go uinrecognized but suffer
anonymity involuntarily as a consequence of their very powerlessness to
inconvenience anyone.

 Anonymity is therefore most importantly a Kafkaeque sort of crime maybe.

            P.


----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, September 09, 2001 6:31 PM
Subject: Re: MDMD: The Crime of Anonymity


> I think the irony is that the "Crime of Anonymity" for which the Rev.d has
> been exiled is somewhat lesser than the substance of his misdemeanours
thus:
>
>     That is, I left messages posted publicly [...] Accounts of certain
>     Crimes I had observ'd, committed by the Stronger against the Weaker,--
>     enclosures, evictions, Assize verdicts, Activities of the Military,--
>     giving the Names of as many of the Perpetrators as I was sure of [...]
>                                                             (9)
>
> Which does seem to relate to the predicament of a prize-winning and
renowned
> author who speaks on behalf of "the Preterite" and who names the names,
> literally, of some of their oppressors in his fiction.
>
> I think that the Rev.d is fully aware of the irony too.
>
> best
>
>