in praise of amused villainy

[Aaron Holms]

  Mr. Holms --

  I merely found your description of Morris amusing.
You obviously have a much
  different sense of Morris than some of us have, and I
respect that.  Perhaps
  you've developed an offlist or even personal
friendship with the man who,
  for all I know, may be a warm and charitable human
being.  The Morris I've
  seen over my 3 or 4 yrs. on the list, however, is
quick to insult,
  vitriolic, and condescending; in fact, as someone
said earlier, he is quick
  to defend himself by questioning what others have
said that's much more
  impressive -- a weak rhetorical strategy, but typical
of him.  In fact, with
  a brief scan of the archives, we see that

  Morris complains:
 
http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0206&msg=67160&sort=date

  then later the "peacemaker" posts:
 
http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0206&msg=67516&sort=date

  and:
 
http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0206&msg=67544&sort=date

  wastes bandwidth with:
 
http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0206&msg=67511&sort=date

  and:
 
http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0212&msg=73837&sort=date

  and busts on various people when they seem to be
posting "too much" (like
  calling Monroe "the ubiquitous") and others when they
post what he feels is
  "too little."  And frankly, nothing he himself posts
is all that
  ground-breaking if you ask me (unless it's his haikus
of old.  Priceless,
  they were.).

  But hey, we all have our supporters and detractors on
the List.  And one
  man's junk is another's treasure, right?

  Tim

Yesterday I saw a child of two or possibly three years
and he was stuck inside a phone booth. It was a glass
booth on all sides with a an acordian like spring door
which had been wedged shut and there was no way for the
little fellow to get out. He was much to short to reach
the door handle and pull on it and there is simply no
other way to get a that type of ddpr open from the
inside. The world passed him by. He was like a boy in a
bubble in the middle of the city. He began to feel
around the glass and panic crossed his face as he
looked out at the crowds of people rushing by. He
reached up and down and pressed his face against the
glass on all sides. He let out thin, high-pitched
screams. These screams were pure in pitch, almost
unhuman, pre-human perhaps. I could see him thinking,
learning, discovering, recording his failures. He tried
to reach the phone, but it was too high up; he thumped
his head on the glass. He banged his head and his fists
on the door, pounded the metal frames and screamed.
Then he waited to see if his screams would do any good.
He screamed again. He was boxed in terror. You can see
him as he grows older in that glass box. I have
children of my own and I was recently blessed with my
third child and so I was transfixed by this scene, by
the boy screaming in terror, pounding, screaming,
growing toward death. His baby-sitter, or baby-walker
or wahever she was standing there all the while. She
was feasting on his suffering. It was a villainous
amusement. 

But her amusement required no effort. Yours, took time
and effort. To priase Morris you went into the archives
and put together an argument with supporting evidence.

Ah Morris! Ah Profanity! 

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