Gosh thank you Jeffrey, I don't know what to make of all this. I had no
idea. On ground that I can negotiate -- tell Joe Amato that I'm a bit
miffed he doesn't remember *me* fondly, the dog. And I'm the one who
ploughed through the creative writing pedagogy essay, goddammit.
But thank you very much.
Mairead
On Thu, 11 Oct 2001, Jeffrey Jullich wrote:
> Quoting Mairead Byrne <[log in to unmask]>:
>
> > I wonder would anyone have an email contact for Gary Sullivan.
> > I've been
> > trying to access Readme and getting the earthlink page. All
> > suggestions
> > welcome.
> > Mairead
> >
> Mairead:
>
> Gary Sullivan recently posted/claimed on the U.S. Electronic Poetry
> Center List that, due to some alteration in web server, the URL for
> Readme had been changed and now required some additional word
> ("home"?). You might check the Buffalo archives for that--- although
> I believe you may still find yourself dead-ended.
>
> Because, PLEASE NOTE:
>
> This posting appeared fast upon the tail of certain legal/ethical hot
> water Readme had churned.
>
> In August, the Buffalo List focused a great deal of public attention
> and pressure on Sullivan for having published identity theft documents
> and homophobic hate literature in Readme.
>
> He had printed a fraudulent interview between "John Ashbery"and one
> Jacques Debrot,--- which in fact John had no involvement with or
> knowledge of. The interview puts words into Ashbery's mouth equating
> homosexuality with insanity. Sullivan also added to the Debrot by
> himself commissioning two forged "Ashbery" poems that accompanied the
> interview, by an author whose identity he has refused to disclose
> publicly.
>
> Simultaneously, the trail lead to another "Ashbery" counterfeit in
> Andrew Felsinger's litvert, previously accused of being mere copyright
> violation of a valid text.
>
> Felsinger had perhaps been duped (by Debrot, who gave him it) into
> believing the fake was a real Ashbery poem. Felsinger yielded fairly
> quickly to persuasion and removed the link to the forgery, and he
> xxxx-xxxxxxx-ed out the name "John Ashbery" so that web search for
> John's name would no longer lead to the traces of that deception. His
> initial plea of naivite is plausible, given the benefit of the doubt.
>
> Sullivan, however, remained recalcitrant and, despite heated public
> disclosure and outcry, he defended his deceit (as in the spirit of
> Nabokov, or as a nostalgic evocation of a similar mid-1900s petite
> scandale Berrigan/"John Cage" interview [also, note, aimed at a
> homosexual man] which he said is a touchstone role model to him).
>
> It was only after September 11th had given Sullivan still more time to
> perpetuate his malfeasance, or to let it openly malinger, that direct
> contact from John or his agents was reported to have secured a promise
> that a "disclaimer" would appear in Readme.
>
> But it was then at only exactly that point that Sullivan announced,
> ostensibly, taking the entire contents of all Readme issues into
> subterfuge by making them inaccessible behind the password protection
> that you encountered. (By then, intimations and admissions had
> emerged about additional Readme forgeries or more identity theft.)
>
> Within days of that, Sullivan --- when a subsequent case of false
> identity was found on-List --- theatrically threatened that he would
> have nothing to do with that on-line poetry community anymore and that
> he was signing off from there forever, because they should have
> censored the use of a pseudonym.
>
>
> I hope this is helpful to you and others, and that it answers your
> question.
>
> Fond appreciation for the U.K. List's and that country's ongoing
> level-headedness and encouragement for us beset New Yorkers, sent
> gratefully from here on the palisades of upper Manhattan. And regards
> to Gabriel Gudding, Mairead, whom Joe Amato remembers fondly from
> their old collaborations on the U.S. List.
>
> Jeffrey Jullich
>
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