Fw: The Glory Days

[Meg Larson]

Alas, I was one of the blocked posters.  It seems rather pointless but I'm 
trying again, just so y'all know what was blocked--my usual irrelevant 
inanity.  I did, however stoopidly, NOT cut the original messages and that 
may have put me over the limit.  This time I snipped 'em.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Meg Larson" <megley1 at chartermi.net>
To: "Will Layman" <WillLayman at comcast.net>; <jbor at bigpond.com>; 
<pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, June 27, 2005 8:45 AM
Subject: Re: The Glory Days


>I was on the list at the time, and I agree with Will's assessment, that at 
>first, Jules was charming and interesting and the list was eager to find 
>out what he could add to the discussions, and to our understanding of 
>Pynch. But like the spoiled kid who takes his ball and goes home, Jules 
>only wanted to talk about what he wanted to talk about, and if we asked him 
>something he didn't like, he would become very petulant and petty, and then 
>just plain nasty and disruptive.  He was constantly chiding the listers for 
>their devotion to an author that he basically deemed unreadable, 
>untalented, and unworthy of such devotion.  Without reading any of Pynch's 
>work since GR--and there were serious doubts that he'd even read that--he 
>simply dismissed that work out of hand, and took great offense that we 
>would call him on the carpet for his blatant and baseless attacks on 
>Pynch's work; his attitude was that the list should be eternally grateful 
>that he, someone who (once) knew Pynchon, would lower himself to post to 
>the list.  He didn't intend to enlighten us in any way--he wanted to trade 
>on his connection to TRP, thereby bringing attention to himself, and wanted 
>only, it seems, to trash TRP and us.  It was amazing to me that he could 
>make such bold pronouncements wrt the work, but couldn't back any of those 
>claims with concrete reasons.  He came off as jealous, really; after all, 
>he thought he was a much better writer than Pynch, even though he had 
>nothing to prove it--that Playboy article was pretty much ancient history 
>by then.  He even suggested that he was the impetus behind Puzo's work, 
>especially The Godfather.  Again, without any concrete "proof."  There were 
>a lot of academics on the list at the time, by that I mean college 
>grads--and a few profs and teachers--and as any Comp 101 stoodent will tell 
>ya, you have to back up your theses, you have to have textual support 
>(don't start), and Jules had none.  We were such "fawning p-culties" (don't 
>remember who termed us that), that Jules thought we'd simply buy anything. 
>When we challenged him, he had nowhere to go but back to anonymity. 
>LINELAND was just an unfortunate outcome of his time here.
>
> As for the interview with Chrissy, Will is right--when we started asking 
> questions they didn't like, they took the ball and went home.
>
> Hoping this makes some sense--it's early and it's hot here,
> Meg
>