NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/rec/arts/books/23290

Text File | 1992-12-25 | 4.3 KB | 84 lines

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Path: sparky!uunet!nevada.edu!wwhitman
From: [e-mail] (MICHAEL WISE)
Subject: Re: No Wise Man here (Re: *Any* kind of r.a.b split, or at least a *serious* discussion)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
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Date: Fri, 25 Dec 1992 20:56:23 GMT
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In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Steve Dyer) writes:
>If Wise's wildly selfserving and maladroit plea is designed to promote his
>cause at the expense of Heather's, he's just shot himself in the foot.
>I suspect Heather can at least plead innocence by reason of undirected rage.
>Wise, on the other hand, maintains a pretense of reason.
>
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (MICHAEL WISE) writes:
>>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.[...]
>>That she was fat, that she was a lesbian, is hardly in dispute;[...]
>>I consider these to be facts, and on a literary subject.
>
>Snort.  Goodness, why didn't you go all the way and say she was a
>"fat, lazy, Jewish lesbian..." or a "fat, lazy Jew"?  That she was
>fat, lazy or Jewish is hardly in dispute, right?
>
That she was Jewish would hardly have suited my slander, since
I would not see Jewishness as either a positive or a negative (Actually,
Mr WISE might be a little soft on the positive side), and I definitely
wished to accentuate the negative.

>Listen, pal: if you say that someone is a "fat, lazy X", it is generally
>assumed that "fat", "lazy" and "X" are each of them insults, and you don't
>get to weasel out of this by denying that this was your intention, unless
>you are a politician, which I guess most petit academics are.  I don't
>think that people would feel comfortable reading a line like "fat, lazy Jew"
>in any kind of post on r.a.b which pretends to be something other than
>hate speech, and I invite those who glossed over your own delicate phrase
>to ask themselves what the difference is here.  I also don't know why people
>would consider "fat" a suitable adjective in any attempt at literary criticism
>that didn't refer to someone's writing style.  Whatever the merits of the
>literary argument (and I profess no opinion on this), your description of
>Stein was ugly and deserved comment.  Thanks for giving us another opportunity.
>
Guilty as charged. I fully intended to slander Ms. Stein, who might or
might not take offense if she were still alive (most likely, she had
a tougher hide than some of the rabble); fat and lazy were not meant to
be literary criticism, but disparaging remarks on an author I do not
appreciate. I suppose that I will have the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Fat and Lazy People (Gravitationally and Motivationally
Challenged?) on my back before long. Lesbian puts me in dangerous waters,
because I am using it in a pejorative way. I had a long winded justification
written, until I realised that it sounded like a Fascist speech (They're
out to get us, those [insert favorite minority group]), and instead I
will agree with Steve's point: the language was hate language, because it
links two pejorative adjectives with a group of people. No matter how
"true" the remarks may be, lesbianism, by virtue of its parallel placement
in the sentence, becomes a term of abuse. I should be more careful about
how I choose to word my slanderous statements.

I apologize both for my use of these terms, and for my feeble attempt
to justify them objectively.

>Oh, yeah: Merry Christmas to everyone else who might celebrate it today.
>
>--
>Steve Dyer
>[e-mail] aka {ima,harvard,rayssd,linus,m2c}!spdcc!dyer


___________________________________________________________________________
Michael Wise     ([e-mail])    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!