Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0019731, Wed, 31 Mar 2010 00:07:40 +0100

Subject
Re: THOUGHTS: Poor old man Swift
Date
Body
Matt/Jim: I do agree. From the little I¹ve read, that
Carver-re-carved-by-Lish often reads better than Carver-uncut-tout-seul.
But, it raises the LitCritical problem that for many years, college
lecturers were teaching their students about Carver¹s wonderfully tight,
minimalist, Hemmingwavian narrative. What-if, as they say, Carver gets the
Nobel Prize, and Lish claims his share? At which point does editorial
interference, however skilled and needed, amount to a form of fraud on the
reading public. We are used to sports stars¹ ghost-written memoirs titled,
e.g., David Beckham was talking to Ian McEwan [I made that up!]. But the
paying Carver-fans were unaware of the collaborattion, as far as I know,
until the posthumous leaks. Is it terribly old-fashioned and undeconstructed
to want to associate written works with their real authors wherever
possible.
PS: Are there any latter-day Thomas Bowdlers around willing to hose away the
naughty bits from Lolita? Or have we already caught a glimpse of this with
Kubrick¹s movie, toned down against VN¹s wishes?
SKB


On 30/03/2010 16:52, "Matthew Roth" <MRoth@MESSIAH.EDU> wrote:

> Just a trifle I ran across while reading about the last days of Swift in
> Craik's "The Life of Jonathan Swift" (1894):
>
> "Looking at himself in the glass, he was said to have exclaimed in pity, 'Poor
> old man!'."
>
> I wonder if this provides the origin of Shade's variant line, "Poor old man
> Swift, poor --, poor Baudelaire." In which case, was John Shade also looking
> in the glass when he wrote that line?
>
> On another topic, I found the idea Lish editing VN very amusing, though I
> agree with Jim Twiggs that Lish's Carver is almost always preferable to
> Carver's Carver.
>
> Matt


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