Love-Hounds-request@EDDIE.MIT.EDU.UUCP (02/23/87)
Really-From: uwvax!astroatc!gtaylor@harvard.harvard.edu (Mais, ou sont les neiges d'antan?) >>Incidentally, since you have seen fit to make condescending remarks >>about our relative knowledge of art, it's not out of line for IED >>to mention that he graduated from Harvard (with high honours) in art >>history; received his M.A. in nineteenth-century painting from UCLA; and >>will receive his Ph.D. in same from Columbia this October. Please >>let him know if your own credentials greatly exceed his. Seeing as I am the poor son of sharecroppers, and grew up in a tar-paper shack where the only books I had were Michael Nyman's "Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond" and a battered copy of Gregory Battcock's "Minimal Art" left behind by some plantation owners who were just passing through, I must hang my poor head for shame-I must truly now stand revealed before you as one of those horrible ahistorical yahoos who have so conspired to trap those so noble and magnanimous as andrew in the squalid mire of this benighted age-a time wherein such a large number of my fellow yahoos (and now even the fair Ms. Trowbridge has joined our besmirched ranks-if only for a moment [Hi, Sue!])) take a base delight in coarse lampoon of andrew's devotion to his image of Ms. Bush, and of his painstaking efforts to make himself perfectly clear by the consistent and unassailable factuality of his impassioned missals. His analysis and gracious treatment of those who make light of him should give us all both a cause for deeper self-reflection and a role model which we would do well to emulate. Perhaps the day may come when we, too, can stand on the lofty heights and feel his loneliness-that of a true romantic marooned amidst the dreadful detritus of pluralism, scepticism, and cynicism of the late 20th century. Trapped-like Howard the Duck-in a world he never made, condemned to have his every serious effort at clear, reasonable and factual discourse answered by the lowest of taunts and jeers. Even the persona he devises and the whimsical characters which so enliven his lonely crusade (and-by extension-ours, should we aspire to agree with him and cast off our blinders and naughty taunts) are objects of scorn again and again. How can he be denied even the most meagre and harmless of charades?-the uncharitable wretches. Why do they persist in harping on this minor point to no avail, when there is so much more about Kate to more fruitfully discuss? Why, one could raise the level of this discussion and ennoble oneself by discourse with andrew instead of these same dreary ad hominems. Must the barbarians disport themselves with such gleeful and dreary repetition on these tired old themes and never even glimpse their own stupidity? How can they be so content with the kind of self-deception that comes from knowing, deep inside, that they are incapable of modifying any of andrew's words? He has again and again invited discussion, and felt those quiet washes of pleasure at holding an unassailable position with as great a regularity. But what is this-yet another fruitless posting that again fails to address the issues? It strains the charity of one's heart.