RE: a few answers
Sean Draine (seandr@microsoft.com)
Fri, 06 Nov 1998 10:19:41 -0800
The answer to your question, Camille, Why is Scottie on this list?, was
given by Scottie himself in the sentence immediately preceding the snippet
you preserved in your reply. Here it is again, for your benefit.
"Chatting about books is something civilised people do over a dinner table,
over a few drinks, or even through the medium of a mailing list."
Chatting about books should thus be distinguished from such cruel and
barbaric activities as beating to them death with literary theory. As for
Scottie's suggestion that literature courses are a waste of time, and that
academia tends to attract the untalented, this has been clearly (and quite
convincingly in my mind) laid out by Salinger himself! Has anyone here
actually read Franny & Zooey?
I think the pursuit of intelligent, creative, and witty conversation is as
grand a charter for this list as any.
-Sean
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Camille Scaysbrook [mailto:verona_beach@geocities.com]
> Sent: Friday, November 06, 1998 4:54 AM
> To: bananafish@lists.nyu.edu
> Subject: Re: a few answers
>
>
>
> > The profession of teachers is one of
> > the shameful professions - like that of social workers, of bank
> > robbers or of psychiatrists - attracting, by its
> nature, the very
> > last people who should be practising it & existing -
> like the others
> > - for the benefit of the practitioners rather than
> their clients.
>
> So I should be ashamed to have listened to and enjoyed
> everyone on this
> list?
>
> So I should be ashamed of even *joining* this list rather than simply
> letting the name `Salinger' drift over my martini between
> epigrams as I
> take luncheon with my cronies and readjust my monocle?
>
> So I should be ashamed of actually learning a lot from being
> on this list?
> >From both official and unofficial teachers?
>
> So I should be ashamed of allegedly wasting three years of my life
> listening to teachers who were obviously just in it for the
> money and their
> own glory?
>
> I should also be ashamed of letting a few Posts and
> Structurals creep into
> my thoughts and my writings?
>
> In a lot of ways, I feel very, very sorry for you. I won't use Jim's
> succinct language, but can I just ask one more time - why
> *are* you here if
> you can't stand the whole basis of our discourse here? Are you just a
> computer generated factor which has been programmed to stop the list
> becoming stagnant?
>
> To everyone else - thanks, and without any guilt, I have
> learnt a lot and
> hope I have taught you a bit too. Cause that's what *I'm* here for.
>
> Camille
> verona_beach@geocities.com
> @ THE ARTS HOLE www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
> @ THE INVERTED FOREST www.angelfire.com/pa/invertedforest
>