For your general amusement

[The Great Quail]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Jules Siegel <siegel at prodigy.net.mx>
Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2002 22:32:24 -0600
To: quail at libyrinth.com
Subject: "Presents?"

I have to say that you are incredibly snide and unfair when it comes to my
work. I received a notification to your llink to my Pynchon article. As a
result, I've permanently removed the page with the notice below. Please
don't come back with some comment about my inability to understand irony.
Your comment about "presents" isn't amusing, and it isn't correct. It's just
a sophomoric and creepy little smear.

---Begin forwarded text---

This page has been removed because of a snotty comment in a link at
http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_links.html
I didn't ask for "presents." I said that readers who enjoyed the piece and
wished to express their appreciation could send me a book.

If you wish to read the article, please purchase my book, Lineland.
Mortality and Mercy on the Internet's Pynchon-L at Waste.Org Discussion List,
where it appears in full. You can find it on amazon.com.

I'm sorry to have to take this action after several years of making the
story freely available, but when a principal Pynchon site abuses my
generosity in this way, I feel that enough is enough.

For more about Lineland, see Dr. Larry Daw's review
http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_lineland.html

I was given the opportunity to look at this before it ran, as Dr. Daw
confessed that he felt that his contempt for Pynchon-L at Waste.com might have
influenced him unfairly. I believe he made some minor changes, but all in
all, it is one of only two negative reviews that Lineland received.

Dr. Daw's review is a perfect example of the absurdly one-sided
Pynchon-worshipping cultism that pervades the Pynchon sections of the
site -- and is characteristic of Pynchon scholarship in general. It's a
political attack on me and Pynchon-L at Waste.Org, not a literary review.
Nonetheless, taken with a very large grain of salt, it does tell you what
Lineland is about. For other reviews see
http://www.cafecancun.com/bookarts/reviews.htm.



------ End of Forwarded Message