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Fw: Fw: ARE nabokov's late works sterile? Let's be honest...
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Rodney Welch" <rodney41@mindspring.com>
> ---------------- Message requiring your approval (147
lines) ------------------
> Mr. Kenny is right to say that citations (so far as I have read) are
> rather few in Peck's drive-by shootings of literary immortals. But
> there is something about the word "sterile" that strikes the right note
> when I think of the later works; rather than doing Peck's work for him,
> I was merely trying to see if others agreed. Nabokov is not beyond
> criticism; you can fairly apply to him the same standards we apply to
> other writers, by using his best work as a standard of comparison.
> Personally, I don't see Transparent Things or Look at the Harlequins
> having the same interest level as most of his other work, and I
> wondered what others thought. Brian Boyd did write a fairly stirring
> defense of Harlequins some years ago in The Nabokovian; I didn't find
> it convincing, but it is interesting and thoughtful as is all of Boyd's
> work.
>
> Rodney Welch
> Columbia, SC
>
> On Wednesday, June 9, 2004, at 10:10 PM, D. Barton Johnson wrote:
>
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Kenny, Glenn" <gkenny@hfmus.com>
> >> ---------------- Message requiring your approval (112
> > lines) ------------------
> >> As per Rodney Welch's query, it's interesting. Here's the rub-what he
> > calls
> >> the "scattershot" attack of Peck. That's exactly the word. He never
> >> cites
> > a
> >> passage, never dissects a sentence. He thinks that just by saying
> >> "sterile"-that is, just by HE, Dale Peck, saying "sterile"-he
> >> validates
> > his
> >> point. Why is Welch trying to do his work for him? Why is he asking
> >> us to?
> >>
> >> GK
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
> >> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> >> Sent: 6/9/04 7:03 PM
> >> Subject: Fw: ARE they sterile? Let's be honest...
> >>
> >> ----- Original Message -----
> >> From: "Rodney Welch" <rodney41@mindspring.com>
> >>> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (58
> >> lines) ------------------
> >>
> >>> Maybe this is as good a time as any to ask the group whether Dale
> >> Peck's
> >> cranky, scattershot attack doesn't score a few points. No one who has
> >> read
> >> Faulkner can deny there are incomprehensible rambles (although why he
> >> restricted this comment to his late career is a mystery) and I
> >> personally
> >> think DeLillo highly overrated -- although I'll keep Gravity's
> >> Rainbow,
> >> Mason & Dixon, and the divine Ulysses, thank you very much. But while
> >> I'm
> >> not sure exactly what Peck means by "late," I think you have to be a
> >> highly
> >> committed or possibly career Nabokovian to enjoy "Transparent Things"
> >> and
> >> (especially) "Look at the Harlequins," which cannot be said of their
> >> predecessors (although some might include "Ada" in this group). I
> >> think
> >> of
> >> them as the least of his books; some readers consign the bottom rungs
> >> to
> >> "Bend Sinister" or "Laughter in the Dark," but both of those have a
> >> compelling narrative drive that his last two novels simply do not.
> >>>
> >>> Rodney Welch
> >>> Columbia, SC
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> -----Original Message-----
> >>> From: "D. Barton Johnson" <chtodel@cox.net>
> >>> Sent: Jun 8, 2004 11:20 AM
> >>> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> >>> Subject: Fw: the sterile inventions of late Nabokov
> >>>
> >>> ----- Original Message -----
> >>> From: "Kenny, Glenn" <gkenny@hfmus.com>
> >>> .>
> >>>> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (37
> >>> lines) ------------------
> >>>> Hard to believe The Atlantic is printing such bilge?the revenge of
> >> the
> >>>> stupid really has infected almost every branch of literary
> >> discourse.
> >>>>
> >>>> GK
> >>>>
> >>>> -----Original Message-----
> >>>> From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
> >>>> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> >>>> Sent: 6/7/04 11:40 PM
> >>>> Subject: the sterile inventions of late Nabokov
> >>>>
> >>>> <http://www.theatlantic.com/images/logotop.gif>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Hatchet Jobs,
> >>>>
> >> <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1565848748/theatlanticmonthA/
> >> ref
> >>>> =nosim/> by Dale Peck (New Press). In these essays Peck rightly
> >>>> eviscerates contemporary "bombastic and befuddled" literary
> >> novelists
> >>>> who have defined and adhere to "a tradition that has grown
> >> increasingly
> >>>> esoteric and exclusionary, falsely intellectual and alienating to
> >> the
> >>>> mass of readers." He excoriates the McSweeney's crowd and "the
> >>>> ridiculous dithering of John Barth ... [and] the reductive cardboard
> >>>> constructions of Donald Barthelme," and would excise from the modern
> >>>> canon "nearly all of Gaddis, Pynchon, DeLillo," and?while he's at
> >>>> it?"the diarrheic flow of words that is Ulysses ... the
> >> incomprehensible
> >>>> ramblings of late Faulkner and the sterile inventions of late
> >> Nabokov."
> >>>> He correctly maintains that in writing "for one another rather than
> >> some
> >>>> more or less common reader," th! ese writers have created a
> >> situation in
> >>>> which "the members of the educated bourgeoisie ... are sick and
> >> tired of
> >>>> feeling like they've somehow failed the modern novel." In his
> >> meticulous
> >>>> attention to diction, his savage wit, his exact and rollicking
> >> prose,
> >>>> his fierce devotion to stylistic and intellectual precision, and?of
> >>>> course?his disdain for pseudo-intellectual flatulence, Peck is
> >> Mencken's
> >>>> heir (although he's got to curb his lazy use of expletives). He
> >> writes
> >>>> that this collection marks the end of his hatchet jobs. For the sake
> >> of
> >>>> the republic of letters, he'd better change his mind.
> >>>> <<logotop.gif>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >
>
From: "Rodney Welch" <rodney41@mindspring.com>
> ---------------- Message requiring your approval (147
lines) ------------------
> Mr. Kenny is right to say that citations (so far as I have read) are
> rather few in Peck's drive-by shootings of literary immortals. But
> there is something about the word "sterile" that strikes the right note
> when I think of the later works; rather than doing Peck's work for him,
> I was merely trying to see if others agreed. Nabokov is not beyond
> criticism; you can fairly apply to him the same standards we apply to
> other writers, by using his best work as a standard of comparison.
> Personally, I don't see Transparent Things or Look at the Harlequins
> having the same interest level as most of his other work, and I
> wondered what others thought. Brian Boyd did write a fairly stirring
> defense of Harlequins some years ago in The Nabokovian; I didn't find
> it convincing, but it is interesting and thoughtful as is all of Boyd's
> work.
>
> Rodney Welch
> Columbia, SC
>
> On Wednesday, June 9, 2004, at 10:10 PM, D. Barton Johnson wrote:
>
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Kenny, Glenn" <gkenny@hfmus.com>
> >> ---------------- Message requiring your approval (112
> > lines) ------------------
> >> As per Rodney Welch's query, it's interesting. Here's the rub-what he
> > calls
> >> the "scattershot" attack of Peck. That's exactly the word. He never
> >> cites
> > a
> >> passage, never dissects a sentence. He thinks that just by saying
> >> "sterile"-that is, just by HE, Dale Peck, saying "sterile"-he
> >> validates
> > his
> >> point. Why is Welch trying to do his work for him? Why is he asking
> >> us to?
> >>
> >> GK
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
> >> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> >> Sent: 6/9/04 7:03 PM
> >> Subject: Fw: ARE they sterile? Let's be honest...
> >>
> >> ----- Original Message -----
> >> From: "Rodney Welch" <rodney41@mindspring.com>
> >>> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (58
> >> lines) ------------------
> >>
> >>> Maybe this is as good a time as any to ask the group whether Dale
> >> Peck's
> >> cranky, scattershot attack doesn't score a few points. No one who has
> >> read
> >> Faulkner can deny there are incomprehensible rambles (although why he
> >> restricted this comment to his late career is a mystery) and I
> >> personally
> >> think DeLillo highly overrated -- although I'll keep Gravity's
> >> Rainbow,
> >> Mason & Dixon, and the divine Ulysses, thank you very much. But while
> >> I'm
> >> not sure exactly what Peck means by "late," I think you have to be a
> >> highly
> >> committed or possibly career Nabokovian to enjoy "Transparent Things"
> >> and
> >> (especially) "Look at the Harlequins," which cannot be said of their
> >> predecessors (although some might include "Ada" in this group). I
> >> think
> >> of
> >> them as the least of his books; some readers consign the bottom rungs
> >> to
> >> "Bend Sinister" or "Laughter in the Dark," but both of those have a
> >> compelling narrative drive that his last two novels simply do not.
> >>>
> >>> Rodney Welch
> >>> Columbia, SC
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> -----Original Message-----
> >>> From: "D. Barton Johnson" <chtodel@cox.net>
> >>> Sent: Jun 8, 2004 11:20 AM
> >>> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> >>> Subject: Fw: the sterile inventions of late Nabokov
> >>>
> >>> ----- Original Message -----
> >>> From: "Kenny, Glenn" <gkenny@hfmus.com>
> >>> .>
> >>>> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (37
> >>> lines) ------------------
> >>>> Hard to believe The Atlantic is printing such bilge?the revenge of
> >> the
> >>>> stupid really has infected almost every branch of literary
> >> discourse.
> >>>>
> >>>> GK
> >>>>
> >>>> -----Original Message-----
> >>>> From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
> >>>> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> >>>> Sent: 6/7/04 11:40 PM
> >>>> Subject: the sterile inventions of late Nabokov
> >>>>
> >>>> <http://www.theatlantic.com/images/logotop.gif>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Hatchet Jobs,
> >>>>
> >> <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1565848748/theatlanticmonthA/
> >> ref
> >>>> =nosim/> by Dale Peck (New Press). In these essays Peck rightly
> >>>> eviscerates contemporary "bombastic and befuddled" literary
> >> novelists
> >>>> who have defined and adhere to "a tradition that has grown
> >> increasingly
> >>>> esoteric and exclusionary, falsely intellectual and alienating to
> >> the
> >>>> mass of readers." He excoriates the McSweeney's crowd and "the
> >>>> ridiculous dithering of John Barth ... [and] the reductive cardboard
> >>>> constructions of Donald Barthelme," and would excise from the modern
> >>>> canon "nearly all of Gaddis, Pynchon, DeLillo," and?while he's at
> >>>> it?"the diarrheic flow of words that is Ulysses ... the
> >> incomprehensible
> >>>> ramblings of late Faulkner and the sterile inventions of late
> >> Nabokov."
> >>>> He correctly maintains that in writing "for one another rather than
> >> some
> >>>> more or less common reader," th! ese writers have created a
> >> situation in
> >>>> which "the members of the educated bourgeoisie ... are sick and
> >> tired of
> >>>> feeling like they've somehow failed the modern novel." In his
> >> meticulous
> >>>> attention to diction, his savage wit, his exact and rollicking
> >> prose,
> >>>> his fierce devotion to stylistic and intellectual precision, and?of
> >>>> course?his disdain for pseudo-intellectual flatulence, Peck is
> >> Mencken's
> >>>> heir (although he's got to curb his lazy use of expletives). He
> >> writes
> >>>> that this collection marks the end of his hatchet jobs. For the sake
> >> of
> >>>> the republic of letters, he'd better change his mind.
> >>>> <<logotop.gif>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >
>