Chris wrote:
> Douglas is entitled to his
> views (which I've never taken to be negative) and he is free to like or
> justify his taste in any terms he chooses, he can be as negative as he
> likes if he wants. We all have passions aroused by these postings but
> savaging Douglas was the least attractive thing I'd seen on the list for
> some time.
And others have spoken, more coherently. (Substitute my
name for "Douglas" in the first sentence and you would have a stout
defence of my so-called "attack".) I have back-channelled Douglas
Clark many a time and cordially; I remember not so long ago posting a
word of support to him after Ira Lightman expressed the wish that
Douglas drastically reduce the number of messages he posts to the
list. Which, to me, is censorship and qualitatively different from
my so-called "attack" (if I remember rightly, Douglas did actually
stop posting for a while). Ira`s post passed without comment. My
"savaging" of Douglas consisted of use of the word "fucking"; the
vehement expression of a suspicion that he didn`t know what he was
talking about; and the invitation to prove me wrong; it was posted in
response to his notorious "technique over content" dismissal of
Rimbaud`s Illuminations, which itself referred back to a post Douglas
made which suggested that the recent flurry of Rimbaud posts (by
Alison, Doug and myself) displayed their writers running around in
circles and adding nothing new. Neither that post nor the subsequent
one bothered to offer any evidence for their views. This is OK by
you, is it, Chris? Because Douglas is a free man, free to call John
Kinsella`s new book "uneven" without so much as a word of explanation
&c.? Tho` I`m not free to call him on it? Want to explain this
state of affairs, and what I`m supposed to apologise for?
all best
robin
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