SLPAD 4

[Michael Bailey]

Take me on?
https://youtu.be/iDXIa8ivFEc

Ah well, I’m just raising the question. Glad to get a response. But like,
in Dickens, he’s pretty serious, there’s death, a lot, but it isn’t the
main theme, is it?

I plan to bend like the willow in response to the force of the text, and of
your good argumentation!

Comparison of said text & argumentation to a stormy gale (such as Hurricane
?Audrey?) is rigorously *not* implied. This is a collegial PAD!
Convivial, even.

TSR, for the nonce, I’d like to stand for “The Small Rain” & will probably
similarly treat other story titles, even amid otherwise voluble commentary.
Like that Steve Martin movie - LA Story? - where there’s this long sign or
something, & they only abbreviate one word. (-;



On Sat, Feb 18, 2023 at 6:01 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have lost the thread of whatever TSR is.
>
> TRP wrote 'attitude toward death" which means a vision of the meaning of
> being human and
> therefore the meaning of life. .....
>
> I agree and cannot read lightweight fiction (as I perceive it.
> Milages vary). Fantasy as a genre is
> arguably one genre....where the fuck is it grounded? Since death is a
> fucking ground of being.
>
> Go on, take me on. I haven't read enough to argue back much.
>
> On Sat, Feb 18, 2023 at 4:10 AM Michael Bailey <
> michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The idea of rendering accents in fiction -
>> Thomas Wolfe did this extensively, I seem to remember. Or excessively,
>> though it was digable.
>>
>> Here it says it’s a regrettable plot point in TSR, but only regrettable
>> because wrong.
>>
>> Mostly I think accents are kind of fun, maybe a little bit informative (if
>> gotten correct) and part of the practice in mental gymnastics one tends to
>> rely on fiction for providing. They deepen the illusion if they’re
>> familiar; if unfamiliar, they pleasantly reify the enjoyable strangeness
>> of
>> fiction and get tucked away to gleefully subvocalize in odd moments,
>> and/or
>> test against real speech in the event of an actual encounter with speakers
>> of that accent.
>>
>> Like in AtD - I can’t tell you how many times I’ve subvocalized Plug
>> Loafsley’s “r to hv” shift when the Chums go to NYC. “…some koindt of a
>> sailboat pitchuhv on it!”
>>
>> It does accord with the way a girl who’d moved from (I know not which part
>> of) New York & attended “my” high school in Michigan spoke, for awhile.
>> Memorable lo these many years.
>>
>>
>>
>> The next mistake cited is in “attitude towards death.”
>>
>> “When we speak of “seriousness” in fiction ultimately we are talking about
>> an attitude toward death—“
>>
>> There’s an interesting proposition.
>>
>> I wonder what he’s going to say about that in the rest of the sentence.
>>
>>
>> When you read that, do you open a little file of possible
>> counter-examples,
>> other salient descriptors of serious fiction?
>>
>> - describing & decrying injustice
>> - championing morality
>> - avoidance of impossibilities & logical contradiction
>> - treatment of ideas
>>
>> Etc etc.
>>
>>  I have my doubts about serious fiction having to deal with death. Seems
>> like simply omitting it from the tale would work, or devising a
>> containment
>> method so that it’s dealt with in logical ways without being a main, or
>> even a major, theme.
>>
>> But I’m not dogmatic about it (woof!)
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>
>