Subject: Re: Ober bearing or It's all Ober
From: Paul Kennedy (kennedyp@toronto.cbc.ca)
Date: Thu Feb 24 2000 - 14:59:33 EST
Hey Paul!
I wouldn't sweat it.... As Matt tends to be implying, we all have our own
levels of guilt. And Jerry und die Uberman supply us with plenty of
mitigating circumstances.
Here's my story: Many years ago, in the bottom basement stacks of my
university library, I discovered some book of criticism (could it be the
Twayne series?) that included a list of "uncollected" stories in the
bibiography. I spent the next few hours digging old New Yorkers ("Hapworth"
is the one that I remember) and Esquires, and Saturday Evening Posts, and
(can this be right?) Redbooks out of the magazine stacks.... There was a
Collier's too, I think.... Anyway, I photocopied everything and felt like
I'd personally discovered the Arc of the Covenant or something....
Time passes.... Too much time passes....
Last year, somebody (was it you?) posted the tendentious URL in the
bananafishbowl, "for 24-hours only".... (This was way back last spring, for
what it was worth.) I downloaded everything I didn't already have, and
actually printed everything up and put it away in my filing cabinet. It
will probably disqualify me from membership here, but I must confess that I
haven't looked at ANY of those stories since. (Mitigating circumstance
here, I plead, is overwork....)
But I DID photocopy many of the stories late last year, and I transported
them across the longest undefended border in the world, and I delivered them
to a woman whom I'll love forever because she believes in lost causes--ie,
the Chicago Cubs. I believe that she may have perused a story or two....
Who's guilty? And how guilty are they?
I sure know that if I were a writer (and I guess I AM a writer, of sorts)
I'd not mind people reading (or listening to...) what I've written. In
fact, I think I'd be flattered that they seemed to spend so much energy
seeking out such stuff.
In fact, I think it was by passing around just such illuminated manuscripts
that the Irish are reputed to have saved civilization. But I'll leave it to
Scottie to correct both my history and my atrocious sentence structure....
Cheers,
Paul
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