Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0005930, Tue, 24 Apr 2001 13:37:23 -0700

Subject
Re: Kevin Ohi's Article in Nabokov Studies
Date
Body
The editor shares Mr. Iannarelli's conviction that reading beyond the
second page is very desirable. -----Original Message-----


----- Original Message -----
From: Iann88@aol.com
To: NABOKV-L@listserv.ucsb.eduSent: Monday, April 23, 2001
2:06 PMSubject: Kevin Ohi's Article in Nabokov Studies
I could not get beyond the second page of Kevin Ohi's article
in the latest
"Nabokov Studies" because the article is an example of the
"new" literary
criticism which I gave up reading years ago. Every third
word in Ohi's
article is a Huge Concept word, even the verbs, and these
words are technical
jargon terms crudely appropriated from psychoanalysis, law,
business, and
the very unsocial social sciences. These Huge Concept words
pile up,
sentence after sentence, page after page, until the whole
thing collapses
into a stupefying mess. Whatever happened to elegant,
readable prose which
Nabokov himself favored? It is a shame that this kind of
writing appears in a
publication devoted to Nabokov, who would have laughed this
essay out of
existence. I hope in the future the editor will offer us more
literate
contributions.


Phillip Iannarelli
Cleveland, Ohio
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