FW: Hollander and me, a reminiscence

[jbor]

My version of those long-ago events, from an offlist message I sent to a
friend, who had asked about it, some 18 months ago. I believe it was Doug,
and his "slothrop666" and other pseudonyms, who caused all the upset at the
time, and who has tried to keep the acrimonies alive ever since.
Unfortunately, because Doug's persecution and fabrications seem to be
never-ending, my side of that story needs to go into the p-list archives now
as well. 

It takes one click to delete.


----------
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2001 08:14:13 +1000


[...]

As for Charles Hollander, quite a long time ago now the list was in the
middle of a group reading (of _GR_ or _Vineland_ I think). "DudiousMax"
appeared on the list just as Terrance and I were having another of our
disagreements. Millison was chiming in against me, or had been, and "Max"
threw in a couple of sarcastic comments as well, to which I replied angrily
on-list. It blew up after that: Millison, "Max", and then "slothrop666" all
started slinging off at me. (John Krafft threw in his two cents as well, and
I took him up on it offlist. We still correspond to this day.)

"Max" wrote to me offlist saying something like "there are only 8 or 10
people on the list who are intelligent enough to understand Pynchon, and to
comprehend what you are writing" and tried to earn my complaisance with
flattery. I wrote back saying that I thought he was wrong and being an
elitist. But the thing that annoyed me most is that when he wrote to me
offlist he still pretended to be "Max". After this duplicity I began to
think that he was one of Terrance's personas, and announced as much on list.

The hoo-ha with "slothrop666" and other anonymous trolls, and Millison,
continued on and, once I found out that "DudiousMax" was actually
Hollander, I again made a mistake by thinking and announcing that he was the
one using the personas to insult people (mainly myself, Kai, David [Morris]
and MalignD, as has been the case consistently for about 2 or 3 years. It's
pretty obvious to me now that "slothrop666" is Millison, as I think I
mentioned to you before.)

After it all settled down again I did apologise to Charles offlist, and we
reached a reconciliation of sorts. We've exchanged messages a few times
since then, and I really don't have anything personal against him now. I
don't agree with much of what I've read of his, the name thing, the "magic
eye", and the Kennedy/Lot49, or Pynchon/Wanda, or the one [...] with
Varo/Varro, but I haven't read all that much of it at all. He
seems to me to be trying to present an ultimate reading of Pynchon's texts:
something like "if you don't read it this way then you're misreading it".
Millison [...] bring[s] his name up over and over as if he's the only
person who has ever written anything substantial on Pynchon's work because
[he] think[s] I'm jealous of him or something. But there are hundreds of
published critics out there, as you would well know, so I generally just
ignore it when [he] do[es]. And, in fact, it's Hollander as "DudiousMax" who
sent in that nasty note about "dominance and submission scholarship" on the
list. It's him who you should be asking about "the trouble", not me, because
he seems to be the one with the grudge. Another example was the time when he
had the McClintic article published on the web and he sent Andrew Dinn (a
former prolific poster and organiser here, who was also very poorly treated
by some of the "lurkers") and me a gloating offlist message with the url.

I've got nothing personal against Chuck and wish him every success. I don't
think it works to his advantage to align himself with someone like Millison,
but that's his choice.

So, that's my side of it as near as I can remember. Hope you're well [...]

best wishes