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We've got a long row to hoe
"Blue Covers or Red?"
A friend of mine who was in prison during the Vietnam
War was trying to get some books sent in. There was an established
procedure, and the hack in charge told him that he could have real
hardbound books sent in, but no cheap paperback fiction. So Light in
August and The Sound and the Fury were rejected. (Another
time the same guy rejected Erich Fromm's The Art of Loving,
because "fuck-books" were also prohibited.)
A lot of people feel about internet writing the same
way that prison guards feel about fuck-books and cheap paperback
fiction. They won't read it. They've heard about Drudge, and the
conspiracy-theory sites, and so on, and they refuse to sully themselves
with that kind of low-class shit.
Awhile back I recommended to a PhD friend de
Rachewiltz's
refutation of Frances Woods' Did Marco Polo Go to China? I
mentioned that the piece was immediately available on the internet, but
she said that whe'd rather get it at the library (which I happened to
know would mean going through Interlibrary Loan and waiting anywhere
from several days to a couple of weeks).
Just a couple of days ago I ran into an old academic
acquaintance who I hadn't seen in a few years. We chatted about our
future plans and various friends we had in common, and then she asked me
if I was still publishing. I said that I now self-publish on
the internet. Very quickly, as if I'd invited her to view an autopsy,
she said, "Well, I don't trust the internet" -- and then went on to say
that she herself self-publishes out of a copy center! (And this
woman was otherwise very friendly to me.)
The internet is just a medium, but like any new
medium it threatens people (especially gatekeepers), and a significant
proportion of the academic world apparently is united against it. You
really don't want to get those internet cooties. This is just as stupid as
refusing to read books with blue covers, but who cares about my
opinion? I'm just a dog on the internet.
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I am emersonj at gmail dot com.
Original materials copyright John J
Emerson
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