THE P-LIST HAS NO BALLS AND NO REASON TO XIST

[Michael Bailey]

On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 10:03 PM, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com
> wrote:

> why are you all here?
>

I post and read "here" because I admire the written work of Thomas Pynchon.

I cherish the notion that occasionally I rise to rhetorical heights and
help, in a tiny way, to burnish his reputation.  Failing that, I still feel
better for spending from my word hoard in pursuit of whatever point keeps
receding from me on any given day.

I enjoy and profit from the commentary of others and their references,
because so much of it is news to me...

I feel a certain literary and intellectual fealty to him, because he's
stated things so memorably, and well, in fiction, buttressing and developing
attitudes that I feel are the most valid ones in many cases; and beyond
that, an anonymous affection to the person who writes the work that I like.


If you are challenging us on the basis of a lackluster response to the
article (which you're probably not, but I do feel like a Pynchon List ought
to occasionally take up in favor of its eponym) - I did think it was unfair
to Mr Pynchon, in that its author troubled himself to denigrate Mr Pynchon's
contribution to their conversation without proving that he himself had
contributed any pearls of his own.

not everyone can cause a person -- an accomplished writer, judging by his
credits -- to become interested enough to not only go out of his way to seek
that party's company in public on the strength of a previous minuscule
intermission chat, but even to see his face on strangers for some time
thereafter...perhaps there is more to the company of TRP than the husk of
his work, is what it suggests to me

anyway alice, I hope you have a nice weekend and I for one am glad you're
"here"
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