Subject
Appel on Ada & Eco Plugged (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Bo Brock <brock@ripco.com>
-----------------------------------
APPEL ON ADA
John Rea has raised the issue of Appel's view of Ada, which this list
discussed a few months ago. For what it's worth, I have a bit of "new"
information.
I ran into Appel about a month ago on the streets of Wilmette, and we
struck up a conversation (I was a student of his 1990-1993) about Nabokov
(and NABOKV-L). I mentioned to Appel that my earlier post about his
increasingly negative opinion of Ada had started a fierce debate on this
list, and he smiled and said he'd been told he was "hot on the 'Net." I
asked him to elaborate on his position, and he told an interesting story.
While talking to Brian Boyd one day, Appel asked him if he thought
Nabokov's move to Switzerland was a good idea. Boyd seemed surprised by the
question and answered "Yes, of course." Appel shot back that he believed
leaving America "ruined Nabokov as a writer." I knew what was coming next,
because it's a theme that Appel frequently used in his lectures. To
paraphrase:
Nabokov's best work relies heavily on his observation and mapping of the
quotidian in American and European life. There *is* no quotidian in
Switzerland (essentially), and so his work loses that context. Thus, Appel
believes Ada is to Nabokov what Finnegans Wake is to Joyce: both writers
got lost in their self-reflexive wordsmanship and games, pointlessly
frustrating even the most intelligent readers. Is a book any good if only a
handful of people in the world are able to fully understand it? Ada is a
failure (by VN's standards) because it requires more than a tingling spine:
it requires academic training and volumes of analysis. No good.
On a similar note...
ECO PLUGGED
-----------
An interview with Umberto Eco in the most recent issue of Wired:
Q. Maybe if Joyce had been able to surf the Web
he would have written Gone with the Wind
instead of Finnegans Wake?
A. No -- I see it the other way round. If Margaret
Mitchell had been able to surf the Web, she
would probably have written Finnegans Wake. And
in any case, Joyce was always online. He never
came off.
I don't know if the Web would have made Mitchell any different, but that
last bit is totally wrong, isn't it? I would argue that one of the primary
reasons Finnegans Wake remains essentially unreadable (even compared to the
fantastically complex Ulysses) is that he came offline and wandered around
completely in his head...another expatriate writer who got too far away
from his material.
"Write what you know...."
-Bo Brock
-----------------------------------
APPEL ON ADA
John Rea has raised the issue of Appel's view of Ada, which this list
discussed a few months ago. For what it's worth, I have a bit of "new"
information.
I ran into Appel about a month ago on the streets of Wilmette, and we
struck up a conversation (I was a student of his 1990-1993) about Nabokov
(and NABOKV-L). I mentioned to Appel that my earlier post about his
increasingly negative opinion of Ada had started a fierce debate on this
list, and he smiled and said he'd been told he was "hot on the 'Net." I
asked him to elaborate on his position, and he told an interesting story.
While talking to Brian Boyd one day, Appel asked him if he thought
Nabokov's move to Switzerland was a good idea. Boyd seemed surprised by the
question and answered "Yes, of course." Appel shot back that he believed
leaving America "ruined Nabokov as a writer." I knew what was coming next,
because it's a theme that Appel frequently used in his lectures. To
paraphrase:
Nabokov's best work relies heavily on his observation and mapping of the
quotidian in American and European life. There *is* no quotidian in
Switzerland (essentially), and so his work loses that context. Thus, Appel
believes Ada is to Nabokov what Finnegans Wake is to Joyce: both writers
got lost in their self-reflexive wordsmanship and games, pointlessly
frustrating even the most intelligent readers. Is a book any good if only a
handful of people in the world are able to fully understand it? Ada is a
failure (by VN's standards) because it requires more than a tingling spine:
it requires academic training and volumes of analysis. No good.
On a similar note...
ECO PLUGGED
-----------
An interview with Umberto Eco in the most recent issue of Wired:
Q. Maybe if Joyce had been able to surf the Web
he would have written Gone with the Wind
instead of Finnegans Wake?
A. No -- I see it the other way round. If Margaret
Mitchell had been able to surf the Web, she
would probably have written Finnegans Wake. And
in any case, Joyce was always online. He never
came off.
I don't know if the Web would have made Mitchell any different, but that
last bit is totally wrong, isn't it? I would argue that one of the primary
reasons Finnegans Wake remains essentially unreadable (even compared to the
fantastically complex Ulysses) is that he came offline and wandered around
completely in his head...another expatriate writer who got too far away
from his material.
"Write what you know...."
-Bo Brock