pynchon-l-digest V2 #4272

[Chris Pinner]

Well, picture it this way.  I grew up in the 80's, playing my NES
ridiculous amounts of time, much of it spent on a game called Megaman
2.  I still contend this to be the best game of the series (which got
all the way up to 8), but that is beside the point.  To most kids
playing games out there today, this game is a joke.  "You can't do
anything in it, there is no interaction with any of the environment,
Megaman looks dumb"  (As a side note, a friend of mine who loves the
megaman games has declared that their hero is merely a fat kid in his
pajamas wearing a football helmet, but I digress).  Does this make me
embarrassed of all those times I spent as a child, pretty mcuh
pretending to be Megaman blasting through levels, even though most of
the gaming world has moved on to bigger/possibly better things?  Not
at all.  Similary, with TRP, once the rest of the world has moved on
from proclaiming the genius of GR from the tops of mountains, does
that make me any less embarassed to say I love and still don't fully
get all of it?  Heck no.  The dangerous part here is the tendencies of
people to identify themselves with the works they hold dear to their
hearts.  While I love Megaman 2, it is not something that defines who
I am.  Likewise, loving GR should not make me separate myself from
those who don't.

Wow, that got really long and went all of nowhere...apologies if needed...

Chris Pinner


On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 09:43:10 EST, Elainemmbell at aol.com
<Elainemmbell at aol.com> wrote:
> Interesting question... I don't think past attachments are EVER false. They
> reflect what was true, or felt true, at the time they were experienced. Any
> juvenilia can seem silly or even embarrassing in retrospect but I believe
> it's important to respect even past sillinesses and shabby aesthetics since
> they sent us, by  perhaps awkward routes, to whatever it is we have now
> become and will tomorrow continue to becoming. That's why I admit, even in
> my present refined and elevated intellectual state, that yes I did see Iron
> Butterfly in concert not once but twice. 
> 
> In a message dated 3/10/05 8:11:03 AM Eastern Standard Time, mwaia at yahoo.com
> writes: 
> 
> 
> -- is it ALWAYS just a matter of time before we come to see ALL our 
> attachments to art as vaguely false projections of our own self-image? 
> 
> 
>