From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 2009 11:14:51 -0500
Archived: Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:55:16 -0500
Subject: Rimmer & Clark On Hufford [was: Ray Stanford's...] 


>From: John Rimmer <johnrimmer.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <post.nul>
>Date: Thu, 5 Nov 2009 09:37:39 +0000 (GMT)
>Subject: Re: Ray Stanford's Open Letter To Tony Bragalia

>>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <post.nul>
>>Date: Tue, 3 Nov 2009 08:32:21 -0500
>>Subject: Re: Ray Stanford's Open Letter To Tony Bragalia

>>>From: Martin Shough <parcellular.nul>
>>>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <post.nul>
>>>Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2009 22:44:35 -0000
>>>Subject: Re: Ray Stanford's Open Letter To Tony Bragalia

>>"Conscientious skepticism"? Come on, Martin. Put those violins
>>away.

>I wouldn't worry too much[,] Martin. Jerry always has difficulty
>agreeing with people who agree with him. Vide his, and Peter
>Rogerson and my views on David Hufford's book 'The Terror That
>Comes In The Night'. I doubt that any neutral observer could get
>a cigarette paper between us, but Jerry insists that we have
>totally opposing opinions.

First of all, patient and gentle Listfolk, imagine that you hear
a sigh of modest despair passing audibly from the deepest region
of Jerome Clark's lungs.

Second:

John's self-serving view - essentially that in some fashion or
other Hufford's book validates his (John's) variant, such as it
is, of the disbelief tradition - was akin to exactly the
misreading of his work that Hufford complained to me about. The
Terror _subverts_ the sort of "skepticism" without which there
would be no Magonia and no Clark-bashing UpDates communications
from Rimmer. The book isn't simply, as John appears to believe,
Hufford's idiosyncratic version of it.

For his part, Rogerson, for whom John presumes to speak,
understood that my reading of Hufford's book was so different
from his own (also self serving) that he complained - on this
List and perhaps elsewhere - that I had utterly misread it. Of
course I hadn't, as Hufford himself informed me soon after I'd
written an extended review of Terror on the occasion of its
publication. To the contrary, he remarked that I was among the
very few reviewers who grasped his argument; others, he
reported, thought it _validated_ "skepticism". He went on to
write a generous endorsement of my work on the back cover of The
UFO Encyclopedia, 2nd ed.*

John, it's characteristic of you, as I've had occasion to note
in the past, to embrace criticisms as expressive your views all
along when you can't answer them. As UpDates readers know, in
any event, you and I do have occasional areas of agreement, and
happily so. Hufford's work, however, is not among them. If you
really did embrace Hufford, you wouldn't be a "skeptic"
recycling all the usual disbelief-tradition rhetorical
strategies.

>Maybe it's that he just can't bear not to be thought of as the
>sole source of ufological wisdom!

Gee, John, are you sure you're not gazing into a mirror? I could
have sworn that you and your fellow Magonians were in charge of
all ufological wisdom.

Your actual complaint, I take it, is that I fail to find the
wise in your wisdom.


Jerry Clark


*"Clark's UFO Encyclopedia, a work of monumental proportions,
brings together an enormous quantity of material, well
organized, lucidly written and accompanied by extensive lists of
references. Clark not only surveys reports and publications, he
provides very solid discussion, analyzes and weighs arguments,
and places events in their historical context. This book will be
an indispensable reference work for many, many years."
                                   -- David J. Hufford, Ph.D.,
                                   Professor of Humanities, Penn
                                   State College of Medicine and
                                   author of The Terror That
                                   Comes in the Night



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