From: wwhitman@nevada.edu (MICHAEL WISE)
Subject: Re: *Any* kind of r.a.b split, or at least a *serious* discussion
Organization: University of Nevada System Computing Services
Date: Fri, 25 Dec 1992 09:15:37 GMT

In article <JMC.92Dec24163436@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:

>
>Maybe one should take offense only when offense was intended.
>
>Conversely, to fail to take offense when offense was intended is indeed
>offensive.

I thought I would just slide in right here. First, my exchanges with 
Heather have not been, shall we say, pleasant. By e-mail and on the
net, I have been told to do many interesting things with parts of my body.
I did not intend to offend her with my reply to her post on Gertrude
Stein's AUTOBIOGRAPHY. I am a big proponent of Hemingway, right or wrong,
and others on the net have seen me defend him vociferously against mostly
feminist attacks _in class at this university_; most of the responses to
my posts on the net have been positive. I never meant to call her a dyke;
as she was the author of the post, I suppose she took my reference to
dykes elevating Stein at the expense of Hemingway to mean her. Her vit-
roil caused me to go back and re-read the AUTOBIOGRAPHY and Jeffrey
Meyers biography of Hemingway (thus explaining my relative silence).
I don't feel I was in error when I characterized Stein as a fat, lazy 
lesbian with a serious grudge against the more successful Hemingway.
He was her pupil, but he also did a great deal for her, especially 
to help her get her work published (The Making of Americans appeared
serially in the Transatlantic Review while Ford Madox Ford was in
America and Hemingway was at the helm). Her experiments in style were
unsuccessful, mostly because, as Hemingway put it, she was too lazy to
re-write anything and make it understandable for the reader. Hemingway,
for all his faults, worked hard to develop his craft, rising early to
write and revise, and Stein's eminence in his eyes was diminished by
her failure to do so. That she was fat, that she was a lesbian, is hardly
in dispute; that she lived on her father's money is easy to determine;
that she failed as a great Cubist art critic is supported by Braque's
comments that she hadn't the faintest what they were trying to do. 

I consider these to be facts, and on a literary subject. I fear that
I don't get much chance to read *new* books and provide the r.a.b. with
my opinions of them; however, I believe books are about ideas. Ideas
come to centerstage here, and the discussion rightly centers on the ideas
rather than the text of the book. Books are good sources of discussions
about all kinds of issues, and people who love to read also love, not just
to ingest books, but to discuss the issues raised by them. 

I am not above trading insults with Heather; I just don't think it will 
go anywhere. She has been villified, and accordingly she has become a
martyr, a martyr for a cause that Mark (if he were not so sadly embroiled
in and so tired of it) would have written a finer parody of than the MERRY 
SPINSTERS OF R.A.B could ever hope to be. The cause to return this group
to an idyllic past where everyone just talked about books, with the 
corollary that people who sit on the sidelines would contribute to their
heart's content without fear of biting satire or reprisal, is contrary
to the very heart of this newsgroup. This newsgroup is not about books,
but the ideas that come out of books; naturally it is open-ended, and 
it often goes too far. But where do you draw the line? On the other
point, I like the constant probing of my ideas (and of my grammar) be-
cause it makes me think about what I say (and how I say it). Some of it
is inconsequential, some of it is substantial. However, it is interesting
to see how people react to you. I don't see this as a public forum; I 
would never make some of the statements I make if I were actually in a 
room with you people, because I would want you to like me. Here, I don't
have to live with you, work with you, sleep with you, pass pleasant moments
with you; if you don't like me, I can just turn off the computer, refuse
to answer your e-mail, decline to defend my posts. I communicate differ-
ently here; but I'm sure that some of you know me better than my closest
friends, because here I can be truly honest. Scathingly honest. And I
fully expect your reactions to be as honest. I would hate to think some-
one was holding something back, when they have nothing to lose by being
straight with me.

I do not fault Heather for being straight with me. I fault her for wanting
me to change my opinions so that they would be germane with hers. I can
and have done that in conversations to save the conversation from becoming
unpleasant. However, it is not honest, and it is not right.

___________________________________________________________________________
Michael Wise 	(wwhitman@nevada.edu)	UNLV English

"Now I want you to tell me just one thing more. Why do you hate the South?"
"I dont hate it," Quentin said quickly, at once, immediately; "I dont
hate it," he said. I dont hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, 
the iron New England dark: I dont. I dont. I dont hate it! I dont hate it!
				--William Faulkner, Absalom! Absalom!



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