EDNote: I don't want to encourage pursuit of this discussion in a
direction that is not connected in demonstrable ways to VN--so in
forwarding Vic Perry's post, I ask that further buttals and rebuttals
anent B.Boyd's piece pass the Nabocentric litmus test. Thanks--SB.
-------- Original Message --------
<<This is something Thomas Pynchon
brings to our awareness in Crying of Lot 49, when he implies that
only the disenfranchised have the power to overcome the awful
homogeneity in which Oedipa is trapped.>>
Say what? A claim so sweeping and doubtful can hardly be offered as
EVIDENCE. It would require about an essay's worth of proof itself.
On to important things - Boyd's attack on theory is robust, although
narrowly focused --- is "theory" really all just about difference?
And I'll believe biology will tell us something about literature, art
or
music that we hadn't already figured out a LONG time ago when I
actually
see it. Which is to say, go for it, by the way.
some sweeping and doubtful claims of my own:
Art, happily, demands neither usefulness nor correctness, although many
works of art are useful and many are correct. But never all, and
therein
lies the lasting appeal. Biology demands "success" while art does not.
Art can be built with good ideas and bad ideas, and more to the point,
ideas do not answer to flesh just because they are produced by flesh.
Vic Perry
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