Re: Reponse to Robbie

Robbie said:

> It was facetious, sure enough. But I'm not really demanding that only one
> reading is possible, nor rejecting the worth of further knowledge about
> Blake's context.
>

You should pay more careful attention to your own words. You said
something along the lines of, "When Blake said 'to generalize is to be
an idiot,' he meant, 'to generalize is to be an idiot' or he did not."
I admit I'm paraphrasing, because I didn't save my original post. If I'm
quoting you incorrectly and getting you wrong, feel free to post a
direct quotation.

You said this in response to my offer for broader context for Blake's
words.

Now you can assert all day long that you don't intend exclude other
possible readings, especially other readings that arise from greater
context, but the simple fact of that matter is that your statement did
just that. By repeating the quotation and saying it either means what
it says or it doesn't (in defense of your particular reading, and by way
of implicit denial of the need for more context) is to affirm that your
reading is the only correct one.

> I was only maintaining that one can, reasonably enough, consider Blake's
> assertion against generalizing to be itself a generalization. This does not
> reflect poorly upon Blake or his quotation. And perhaps he had a very
> specific understanding of generalizations that changes the sense of the
> assertion. But I still don't see how it is plainly absurd, when seeing the
> quote in the context of a bananafish post containing nothing else about
> Blake, to see it that way.
>

This last sentence is essentially a repetition of what I said in my last
post. You're presenting it as part of _your_ response to me without
quoting me, which implies the idea is original to you.

This is a fundamentally dishonest form of response. You should have
quoted me, then said, "Ok, provide context."

I already said it was my fault for not providing more context to begin
with. Your response is nonsensical.

Let's try moving from step A to step B, without repeating step A ad
nauseum.

Jim

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Received on Thu Jul 17 19:56:09 2003