Introduce yourself

[Hamlet]

Cripes, I can't believe this poster above has had to set this out. If somebody joins a forum, you make them feel welcome, it's basic good manners, the standards on the web are abysmal, elsewhere and perhaps even here on a LITERARY FORUM.
Flint owes nobody an explanation, he's not aggressive, none of his posts have been the faintest bit odd or weird or unclear, and even if they were, that's fine.

[Clarissa]

I must say I agree with Flint. In any case, what we write reveals a lot about us; writing is revealing. What we read, what we buy, our comments on all things literary say enough about us without having to enter personal details such as ethnic origin, age, gender etc.

My gender is obvious from my name. For the rest, my posts reveal as much about me as I want others to know.

[John]

I'm a sloppy New Yorker.

[Eric]

Clarissa, if you agree with Flint about anonymity, then by definition your gender is not obvious from your name, as I demonstrated by my rather puerile period of being Miss Havisham (though I didn't have to get into drag when I posted). Any man can call himself Clarissa or Phoebe or Gorgeous Doreen and sit chuckling into his beard, his beer belly trembling, every time some very gullible and randy hetero bloke makes a pass at what he things is Miss Noobile With the Rippling Tits. We've had disturbed people on this very forum for whom put-downs and thread-spoiling became an end in themselves.

You can't really have a sensible debate with people who are amoebic, because you're never sure if they really like or hate some writer or book, or whether it's a complex and narcissistic pose by someone completely different, which is why I mentioned the groomers of teenage gorls, who also pretend to be someone else.

This is a problem with cyber-contact. If you remain unseen, you can only build up trust among your peers by being consistent and truthful. For instance, everyone knows I translate Estonian literature, but this shouldn't mean I am labelled Mr Estonia who is incapable of opinions about other things. But it does mean that I perhaps know something more about my field than the rest of you. We have the same thing with people knowledgeable about Latin American, or French literature. We all have many opinions here on this forum, but we are also one person, and normal individuals are not conservative one minute, radical the next, or love poetry in one posting, hate it in the next. People who post like that soon become pains and thread-spoilers for the rest of us. Some people confuse humour with attacking others on a rabidly irrational basis. That is not debate.

A simple pseudonym means you keep a respectful distance. But a whole complex and involved pseudo-identity suggests that you are more interested in yourself than in books written by others.

[Clarissa]

I have been away from WLF for quite some time. However, in the past, it must have been fairly obvious from my postings that I am tri-lingual (English, French, German) and where my literary interests lie. As I know from your postings that you are an expert in Estonian literature. I grant you, Miss Haversham, , that a pseudonym does not always give away any details of the poster's identity. It just so happens that I am female. I see no reason to give away personal details on WLF - age, whereabouts, sexual prefrences (here a glance towards Liam whose postings I have often found to be unnecessary and frankly distasteful. Gay Pride is all very well but is surely superfluous in site dedicated to literature. This was one of the reasons I stayed away from WLF for many months.)

People who post like that soon become pains and thread-spoilers for the rest of us. Some people confuse humour with attacking others on a rabidly irrational basis. That is not debate.

I don't follow you on this as an argument against 'anonymity'. I agree with you that the posters you describe are a pain.

And as I said in my previous posting: writing is revealing. I know of your translations of Estonian literature from your postings. That tells me more about you than if I knew your age, gender, sexual preferences etc. I do not need to know that you are 20, 30, 40, 50 or more years old, although I can work out that your interest in Estonian literature is not typical of a British 20 year old and also proves a certain orignality and good functioning of the grey matter (statement of fact, not intended to 'suck up' to you)

[Flint]

Thank you Hamlet, Clarissa, John for your kind welcome.

Eric, I think that on this issue we will have to agree to disagree. Thank you for your interest, in any case.

This obsession about true identity (what is true identity anyway?) reminds me of this typical question people tend to ask when they talk to fiction writers: to what extent is this novel or this story autobiographical? Of course the question doesn't make any sense: everything in a work of fiction is to some extent autobiographical, because the writer has lived in one way or another everything she is describing - we cannot describe anything that we have not in some way or other experienced.

On the other hand, there always tends to be a fair amount of inaccuracy in autobiography, because even if we want to be scrupulously exact and accurate our memory plays tricks on us. I hope you won't mind if I take you as an example. You never appeared in any forum as Miss Havisham or Miss Haversham as you claim you did. I used to follow the BBC forum and, later, the Big Readers Forum, and your nickname was Haversham, and later, Havisham. No 'Miss' was ever affixed to it. You can ask Evie or Himadri about it if you want to check. Also there was never any doubts in those forums about your gender, given the general tenor of your posts as regards gender issues. Not a valid example, then.

But none of this is important. As Clarissa pointed out, what we write - our tastes, our interests, our attitudes - says more about who we are than a whole list of personal data. Let us then talk about literature.

Ah, I'm going on holiday tomorrow, so I'll see you in two weeks' time.

[Liam]

I joined this forum in order to discuss literature

WOW, you're really good at it, .

[Eric]

I personally remember you, Clarissa, from a year or so ago, and realised immediately, by male intuition or whatever other psychological means, that you were the same person who had returned, not an impostor. This is because of the tone of the posting.

But I repeat. such open websites as this one fall prey to seriously disturbed people who like nothing better than taunting serious posters, then hiding for a while. While you were away, one seriously disturbed individual seemed to try to destroy every serious debate about everything he (because women are not usually so nutty in this way) couldn't really participate in or felt left out of. This sort of Broadmoor behaviour still irritates me now that he has gone. Literary discussion should not become a therapy or brand of psychoanalysis.

Liam has chosen to be quite open about his sexuality, and while others may wish to be more coy or closet, he can only be respected for not beating about the bush. Nor is age a big deal. But you cannot have confidence of the opinions of someone who could be leading you up the garden path about their opinions. There was indeed one mysterous case here a couple of years ago. Was it really an American woman from the Deep South, or was it again someone, maybe male, doing some convoluted and "hilarious" identity trick? That person has vanished.

I agree with your last paragraph, Clarissa, in that you don't need to know every detail (boils on the buttock, dandruff?) about everyone else. But there is an element of lowest common knowledge which means that there is a certain in-built guarantee you are discussing with a normal person, not a schizophrenic with evil intent. There's no inaccuracy in my own biography. I may have forgotten or distorted things over time in my memory, but I do not regard myself as several different beings, all different depending on which task is to be performed (R.D. Laing?), and every person to be met, or "dealt with". That way madness lies.

Methinks that Flint protests too much (literary allusion, non-gender specific). But now he has mentioned something that I realised after I posted last time - the fact that I never indeed used "Miss" in front of the pseudonyms - he has already revealed that he was on those other forums, is one of the old crowd. What is his reason of starting anew and adopting yet another pseudonym?

[Liam]

Was it really an American woman from the Deep South, or was it again someone, maybe male, doing some convoluted and "hilarious" identity trick?

Haha, I see you still remember the seventh re-incarnation of Oberon's gorgeous spouse, whatever her/his real gender might have been.

here a glance towards Liam whose postings I have often found to be unnecessary and frankly distasteful

In which case you could have sent me a curt PM expressing your grievance; otherwise, if no one complains, I honestly don't think anything's wrong. But remind me not to meet you in real life, . I can only tolerate people expressing personal distaste for Gay Pride in the virtual realm.

[Clarissa]

Liam, we would probably get on well in real life. The only two people who were always there for me when I was in need of a real friend were/are both gay. One, a theatrical set designer who has unfortunately died since, was the only person who supported me through a most difficult time in my life. None of my heterosexual friends, male or female, were there for me. Alan was there day and night. I miss him sorely.
The other, someone I work with, is now the only true friend I can count on in the same way. I have had more than enough proof of his friendship in some stormy patches I have been through in the last five years.
As for Gay Pride, I just find the expression silly. For one thing, I don't quite understand the why one has to be proud of one's sexual proclivities. Heterosexual Pride would be ridiculous.That said, one of the most fabulous shows I have seen in my life, and I have seen many, was the Life Ball in Vienna this year. An annual event to collect money for Aids research.
Another close friend is HIV Positive and has been treated for the last three years. He has made a magnificent recovery, thanks to the outstanding French National Health Service. I was the only person to visit him in his long stay in hospital. None of his gay friends came.
All this to say, gay or straight per se is not the important factor but I did find some of your postings OTT.

But to get back to the subject of anonymity and the above. Liam, some of your postings were quite outrageous. I am not sure that you would have felt quite so free in mixed company away from the internetand without the cloak of anonymity. Just a thought...

[Eric]

I've never actually noticed myself that any of Liam's utterances have been "outrageous", although I am quite a conservative person myself. There have been some very sick "trolls" on these threads, as I keep pointing out. Now that is what I call outrageous behaviour, i.e. wilfully destroying other people's pleasure out of sheer spite. Oberon's gorgeous spouse is a case in point. She disappeared about the same time as someone who claimed to be the descendant of some minor author. Altogether too much smoke and mirrors for my liking.

I'm not only interested in Estonian literature. I'm tempted to read Uwe Tellkamp's "Der Turm", either in German if my German is up to it, or in Swedish translation. I've read a few pages, and the book does start as a serious novel should. But it is almost dauntingly fat. Will I stick the course? Nevertheless, reading things in one or two other languages is part of me.

Gay Pride is a bit histrionic, but as far as I can see it's a queer carnival rather than anything subversive. The problem is here in Sweden that one group tried to dominate it, from what I've heard, and turn it into a "socialists-only" event, something which incensed members of the Young Liberals who were gay. That sort of destructive divisiveness does the gay movement as a whole no good. I do take on board Clarissa's point about being "proud" (or ashamed, for that matter) of one's sexual proclivities. Surely, as she points out, the idea of Hetero Pride would be ludicrous. If we are to have gender equality we need neither radical feminism that shuts men out of things, nor radical gay movements that look down on heterosexuals (and bi's) in the way that heterosexuals have looked down on gays in the past. Two wrongs don't make a right; no amount of revenge for past sins and crimes can put things right for all of us, not merely for minorities that are perceived as oppressed by their members. But the pink and proud carnival with floats and shouting is still harmless fun, nothing sinister.

[Grant]

Hello everybody. Just a quick post to introduce myself. My name is Grant and I'm from Hong Kong. I'm rather new to the world of forums (actually this is my first!), and so I apologize in advance if things go awry! That said, I look forward to you guys teaching me the tao of the world lit forum!

[Liam]

Hi Grant, don't be shy and dive right in, .

[Eric]

I'll leave the Tao part to Liam.

[Eric]

Is Maidenhair going to introduce himself sometime soon?

[Liam]

Something tells me it's a she, but that's just a gut feeling. I mean, what sort of man, gay or straight would nickname himself Maidenhair, ?

[Old Possum]

Hello all,

I come from Macedonia, am an EngLit student, and have taken a liking to this forum.

[Polly Parrot]

Yay! Another lit student. Welcome.

[Eric]

Welcome EngLit students. But do spare a thought for the thousands of authors not writing in English.

[Flint]

Welcome all newcomers!