Open Letter to Mr. Jules Siegel

[Mutualcode at aol.com]

In a message dated 12/16/02 5:20:02 PM, siegel at prodigy.net.mx writes:

<< I'd rather they buy the book and pay for the information. I'm sure that

Thomas Pynchon gives his work away free on the Internet. >>

It would be illuminating if there were a search engine that could
excerpt all the quoted portions of *the works* from the archives
and collate them into one volume. It would be skewed toward the 
more "significant" passages, but still, I'm sure it would number
many pages. 

Siegel makes an interesting point, however, or, at least hints at
a question which surely will loom larger as fiction continues to 
evolve on the net: How will the most inspired and creative artists
express themselves, control their artistic expressions, and, make
a decent living given the *new* mediums? Pynchon "maxes out" the
bandwidth of the written word. All his techniques seem finally to
signal that the written word has served its purpose, and that 
language, The Word, if you will, requires, or is capable of, using
more bandwidth. 

The current sitiuation is a transitionary phase. The information
carrying capacity of the net is potentially limitless compared with
the written word- although writing will always be historically
foundamental- meaningful thought aggregations seem poised to
evolve beyond the confinement of any static grammer. Artificial
standardizations, like "English" or "German," for example, seem ripe
for supplantion by some mode of expression requiring less
translation. Manipulating visual representations of phonemes will
probably seem quaint to artists of the future.

Lord knows what form of payment they will demand in order to 
share their creativity. The favors of one's spouse might seem 
perfectly reasonable.

respectfully