[ExI] outing myself

Will Steinberg steinberg.will at gmail.com
Wed Oct 28 20:03:04 UTC 2020


What even was the original post that prompt this thread?

On Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 3:58 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 28, 2020 at 7:25 PM spike jones via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >> On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat
> >
> > Subject: Re: [ExI] outing myself
> >
> > On Wed, Oct 28, 2020 at 3:37 PM Dave Sill via extropy-chat
> > <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> > > On Tue, Oct 27, 2020 at 5:36 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
> > <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> > >> To Dave and Dan and whoever:  it was a sendup, a parody, a satire -
> > overstating indeed!  Sorry if you are miffed.
> > >
> > > We're cool. I was just a bit surprised.
> >
> > >...We're cool too. (I mean Bill W and I. No conflict with you, Dave.:)
> No
> > need to worry about me being thin-skinned.
> >
> > >...Regards,  Dan
> > _______________________________________________
> >
> >
> > The joke's on me!  I totally fell for it, and I am still down there: I
> agree
> > with the literal commentary of BillW's parody.  I really do think
> Finnegan's
> > Wake is a literary joke.  It's a novel-length version of Jabberwocky, but
> > far less clever and less meaningful that Lewis Carroll's popular poetic
> > wordspew.  Joyce played a big practical joke on the literature professor
> > class, and the silly goofs took the bait.
> >
> > The above isn't satire or parody, or even self-effacing humor (ja I
> know, I
> > do stuff like that all the time (but not this time.))  I really am
> calling
> > bullshit on James Joyce.  I am really claiming that book is almost
> entirely
> > meaningless, and if literature professors wish for me to slog thru it to
> try
> > to find meaning, I will cheerfully wordspew back to them that Finnegan's
> > Wake is a brilliant vision of the future where confusion mingles with
> hope
> > for uploading into a silicon-based simulated existence, cleverly
> disguised
> > as utter nonsense.
>
> No one's forcing you to read it -- much less interpret it. :)
>
> My guess is it's not a literary joke in any sense you or others here
> mean. That said, Joyce's work abounds in humor, sometimes dark, and
> jokes. It's not like he's hidden that.
>
> But Bill W's joke wasn't merely to attack _Finnegan's Wake_ -- which
> is apparently the go to whipping boy for serious literature here --
> but all modernism, postmodern, pre-modernism... And he went on to
> attack poetry and music too. (With music, I kind of subscribe to the
> 'if it sounds good, it is good' view. But what doesn't sound good to
> me I can sometimes be brought around to with the proper attention and
> 'training.') But he admits now that this was all just a 'sendup' or
> 'parody' or 'satire' now. But of whom?
>
> If you parody or sendup someone, that means you imitate them in a
> mocking manner, no? Just holding forth on views they disagree with
> without being serious isn't a sendup or a parody as such. Instead it's
> better to call it a 'put on' or teasing. At least that's how I would
> classify what Bill W says he did. (I usually avoid doing this online
> because it's too easily misinterpreted. And teasing can cross the line
> for some people. I try not to be a bully online or in person. I'm not
> saying Bill W did that, though some teasing often seems to aim at and
> achieve just that. I've had a lot of caffeine today...:)
>
> Regards,
>
> Dan
>   Sample my Kindle books via:
> http://author.to/DanUst
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