Subject
Re: Fw: Dale Peck---drop half of Faulkner and Nabokov from the
canon . COMMENT (fwd) (fwd) (fwd) (fwd)
canon . COMMENT (fwd) (fwd) (fwd) (fwd)
From
Date
Body
------------------ Dear GK:
I am not defending Dale Peck or his opinion (whether it is well informed or
not). I am simply objecting to the concept of a canon as a defined, neatly
fenced and protected body of literature - I personally prefer to think of
it as more fluid. I find George Shimanovich's charming typo ("cannon"
instead of "canon") strangely appropriate to this discussion as our defense
of an "established canon" takes on almost militaristic form.
I equally object to your definition of any book as "literature: nothing
more, nothing less." In my humble opinion, viewing art only for art's sake
can become dangerously miopic; moreover, it smacks of Peck's own
application of the adjective "sterile" to literature. However, this IS
only my humble opinion - not a defense of Peck or an attack on VN.
Best of luck
Margarit
| On Wed, 30 Jun 2004 10:29:02 -0700
| "D. Barton Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu> wrote:
| ------------------
| Oh my. It seems that every time I take a swipe at the venerable Peck,
some | representative of the class that Whitaker Chambers once called
"the good | people, the nice people," rushes in and tries to make some
kind of case for | the persecuted fellow. Ms. Tadevosyan's "didactic"
post compels me to | amplify a few of my points.
|
| "What the hell," she says, "let's pelt Peck with stones...or at least
have | him forever banished from the land of critical literature for not
providing | with substantial evidence with quotes and references to
quantifiably justify | his claim that VN's works...should not be taught
in their entirety." For | those of you coming in late, please note that
Ms. Tadevosyan is being IRONIC | here. She DOES NOT believe that Mr.
Peck's refusal to actually make his case | should prevent any of us from
taking his case seriously. I don't know about | you, but when someone
tells me that, all visible evidence to the contrary, | the sky is green,
I'd really appreciate that person providing just a little | backup. And I
have to reiterate: with regard to Nabokov-with regard to | almost
anyone-Peck does not make his case. In VN's case, he merely sneers at |
the "sterile invantions of late Nabokov" and calls for the removal of half
| his oeuvre from the canon. Authors that Peck does spend more time with
| (because you see, unlike Ms. Tadevosyan, I have had the misfortune of
| reading a great deal of Mr. Peck's "literary criticism") don't get off
| nearly so easily. For instance, in the case of the contemporary novelist
| David Foster Wallace, Peck speculates that said author's work could be
| improved if he submitted to a vigorous bout of anal sex. No, he's not
| kidding, and yeah, he puts this suggestion in somewhat more vivid terms
than | certain members of this forum might appreciate. But this is the
kind of | mindset that Ms. Tadevosyan insists we must take seriously for
no other | reason than (....now scanning Ms. Tadevosyan's post to see if
she comes up | with any actual reason...), well, I guess, than the fact
that she's | enlisting him in support of the idea that it might be good
for "some of the | giants" to "move aside and make room for others"?
That's not scholarship, | it's not criticism-it's whining. Which Peck
himself is an expert at-here's a | quote to quantifiably justify my
claim, taken from Peck's review of Rick | Moody's (admittedly awful) The
Black Veil:
|
| "I can think of no more urgent reason to write books today than out of
an | overwhelming sense of despair at the state of the world. It is also
the most | urgent reason to write book reviews. When I wrote my last
review for this | magazine, anthrax was traveling through the U.S. Postal
Service and smart | bombs were decimating Afghanistan; now we are waiting
to find out if | Pakistan and India are going to fight the first tactical
nuclear war. Global | warming, overpopulation, the worldwide AIDS
epidemic, the ever-increasing | distance between supposedly democratic
governments and their electorates, | the decimation of culture after
culture by the relentless spread of the | Disneyfied garbage of the
American entertainment complex, and the incredibly | sad, horrible,
hopelessness-inducing fact that people still cannot say what | they
really mean to each other after seven or so millennia of human |
civilization: life really sucks right now."
|
| Poor baby. And so articulate, too.
|
| Peck is not a "snarling nonentity" because he doesn't share "our"
passion | for VN (although if I were to address Ms. Tadevosyan directly,
I might be | compelled to say something along the lines of "What do you
mean WE.."); Peck | is a "snarling nonentity" because he is.(Hey, I just
said what I meant!!!!) |
| Oh, and incidentally, teaching Lolita in a sexuality course is an
abominable | idea. The book is literature: nothing more, nothing less.
|
| GK
|
|
| >
| >
| >
| > ---------- Forwarded Message ----------
| > Date: Tuesday, June 29, 2004 5:57 PM -0400
| > From: Margarit Tadevosyan <tadevosy@bc.edu>
| > To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>,
| > NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
| > Subject: Re: Fw: Dale Peck---drop half of Faulkner and Nabokov from
the | > canon . COMMENT
| >
| > ------------------ How wonderful to see that the Nabokov community has
| > stood up shoulder to shoulder in a patriotic defense against partial
| > decanonization of VN's works! What the hell, let's pelt Peck with
stones, | > let's assume that he is not even literate enough to read
books (unlike us, | > of course), let alone understand them, before
writing his worthless | > reviews. Or at least have him forever banished
from the land of critical | > literature for not providing substantial
evidence with quotes and | > references to quantifiably justify his claim
that VN's works (along with | > other, rather worthy writers, whose
decanonization has interestingly not | > outraged any of us, lovers of
literature) should not be taught in their | > entirety. Or could we
perhaps (oh, what outrage!) simply take this | > opportunity to question
the process of canonization and wonder for a | > second
| > how and why writers become canonized? How many wonderful books have
fallen | > off the academic pages because of their inconvenient length or
some unfor! | > tunate circumstance! How many books would have never
become so popular | > had it not been for some sort of scandalous
attention they received (think | > Madame Bovary, think Ulysses, and
perhaps even Lolita!). Had it not been | > for the fatwa, would ANY
non-specialized literature course ever teach | > Salman Rushdie? Why is
it that we celebrate Joyce as one of the largest | > figures of high
modernism but tend to ignore, for the most part, Gertrude | > Stein? Why
does a class on sexuality necessarilty include Lolita (not | > that
| > I wouldn't pick it if I were teaching a class with that title) but
never | > Djuna Bharnes? Why are we so quick and so vicious in our
judgment of Peck? | > Simply because he wants to open up space for other,
less noticed and who | > knows, perhaps less worthy writers? On the
other hand, how will we ever | > know if they are worthy or not if they
never get any space or attention? | > Why are we so eager to call Peck a
"snarling nonenntity" simply because he | > doesn't want to share our
pass! ion for VN's works?
| >
| > I would hate to give off the wrong impression here or undermine my own
| > interest in VN's works. We read, study, and teach literature not ONLY
| > based on our VERY subjective personal preferences. After all, we are
a | > community of people who study the humanities, where open opinions
and | > critical suggestions matter so much more than quantitative or even
| > qualitative analysis! If we have agreed to vote off writers who are
not | > firmly on our list of most favorites and the people who do not
share our | > opinions, if instead of thinking about literature as a
body, as a history, | > as a system of some sort we indulge in idolatry
of individual authors that | > allows no space for "dissidents", have we
created an intellectual tyranny | > that I think VN condemned in his
writing?
| >
| > I am half reluctant to post this message because of its didactic (very
| > foreign to me) tone, but I want to share my opinion with others for a
| > reason. Last semester I was teaching a course on the self-conscious
| > novel,
| > and after making a preliminary list of assigned texts, I realized
that it | > was an exclusively white male modernist novel course (Joyce,
Beckett, | > Faulkner, Nabokov, Bulgakov, etc.). Now perhaps because I
am the child of | > the politically correct era, I wondered if modernism
was really limited to | > this.... Of course, the truth is that it's
not. Now do we REALLY want to | > cover Peck in mud for suggesting that
some of the giants should move aside | > and make room for others?
| >
| > Thank you
| > Margarit
| > | On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 11:10:37 -0700
| > | "D. Barton Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu> wrote:
| > | ---------- Forwarded Message ----------
| > | Date: Tuesday, June 29, 2004 9:26 AM -0400
| > | From: George Shimanovich <gshiman@optonline.net>
| > | To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
| > | Subject: Re: Fw: Dale Peck---drop half of Faulkner and Nabokov
from | > the
| > ca | non (fwd)
| > |
| > | ------------------
| > | > Explain to me again why we're still spending time on this
snarling | > | > nonentity?
| > |
| > | Because for some Peck is mandatory part of diversity of Nabokov's
| > studies. | Until that kind of diversity is agreed to be wrong for
this | > list Becks will | be showing up.
| > | Or our Editir can qualify such unworthy material: Read Only, i.e.
read | > but | do not comment.
| > | Or you can press Del as I always do.
| > |
| > | George Shimanovich
| > |
| > | > ---------- Forwarded Message ----------
| > | > Date: Monday, June 28, 2004 8:31 PM -0400
| > | > From: "Kenny, Glenn" <gkenny@hfmus.com>
| > | > To: 'Vladimir Nabokov Forum' <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
| > | > Subject: RE: Fw: Dale Peck---drop half of Faulkner and Nabokov
from | > the ca | > non
| > | >
| > | > ------------------ Before getting too deep into which half of
| > Nabokov's | > oeuvre Dale Peck would like to see removed from the
canon, | > we should | > reflect that perhaps even he couldn't really
tell us. His | > lack of | citation,
| > | > which has been discussed here before, camoflauges what could be
a | > | multitude
| > | > of sins. Oh, to hell with it, I'll just come out and say it: I
truly | > doubt | > that Peck has read, let alone digested, the
entireity of VN's | > literary | > output. I rather doubt he's read
everything VN wrote in | > English. Until | > persuaded otherwise, in
fact, I should insist that | > Mr.
| > Peck has read very | > little VN and even less worthwhile
commentary on | > VN.
| > | >
| > | > Explain to me again why we're still spending time on this
snarling | > | > nonentity?
| > | >
| > | > GK
| > | >
| > | > > ----------
| > | > > From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum on behalf of D. Barton
| > Johnson
| > | > > Reply To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
| > | > > Sent: Monday, June 28, 2004 8:17 PM
| > | > > To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
| > | > > Subject: Fw: Fw: Dale Peck---drop half of Faulkner and
| > Nabokov
| > from | > > the canon
| > | > >
| > | > >
| > | > > ----- Original Message -----
| > | > > From: Debby Coley
| > | > > To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
| > | > > Sent: Monday, June 28, 2004 1:40 PM
| > | > > Subject: Re: Fw: Dale Peck---drop half of Faulkner and Nabokov
| > from
| > the | > > canon
| > | > >
| > | > > I am a graduate student majoring in English, and in the
upcoming | > fall | > > semester, I am taking one class titled,
Sexuality and | > Literature, in | which
| > | > > we will read Lolita. I am also taking a class focusing on
works | > by
| > | Joyce,
| > | > > Woolf, and Thomas.
| > | > > deborah coley
| > | > >
| > | > > "D. Barton Johnson" < chtodel@cox.net> wrote:
| > | > >
| > | > >
| > | > >
| > | > > ----- Original Message -----
| > | > > From: Rodney Welch
| > | > > To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
| > | > > Sent: Monday, June 28, 2004 10:11 AM
| > | > > Subject: Re: Dale Peck---drop half of Faulkner and
Nabokov | > from | the
| > | > > canon
| > | > >
| > | > > Message requiring your approval (94 lines)
| > ------------------
| > | > > I guess the question is: what is "canonical" where
Nabokov | > is
| > | > > concerned, and which half is Peck referring to? The general
| > consensus | > > among those of us here, I'm guessing, would be that
| > Nabokov's | masterpieces
| > | > > are The Defense, Invitation to a Beheading, The Gift, Speak,
| > Memory,
| > | Pnin,
| > | > > Lolita, Pale Fire, Ada, and maybe a select group of the
stories. | > Harold | > > Bloom selected only Lolita and Pale Fire for
his Western | > Canon; Nabokov | > > himself said (if I recall
correctly) that he'd only | > be remembered for | > > Lolita and his
translation of Eugene Onegin. | > Where does Nabokov | generally
| > | > > stand in academia nowadays -- has he been crowded out by all
the | > | > > Fulmerfords?
| > | > >
| > | > > Rodney Welch
| > | > > Columbia, SC
| > | > > -----------------------------------------------------
| > | > > EDNOTE. I suppose it depends on which academiac you
ask. In | > my | > > highly prejudiced take he is up there with Joyce.
| > | > >
| > | > >
| > | > >
| > | > >
| > | > > _____
| > | > >
| > | > > Do you Yahoo!?
| > | > > Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
| > | > >
| > | >
| > | > ---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
| > | >
| > | >
| > | >
| > | > D. Barton Johnson
| > | > NABOKV-L
| > |
| > |
| > | ---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > | D. Barton Johnson
| > | NABOKV-L
| >
| > Margarit Tadevosyan
| > English Department
| > Boston College
| > Carney Hall 237
| > (617) 552-2725
| >
| > ---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
| >
| >
| >
| > D. Barton Johnson
| > NABOKV-L
| >
| > ---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
| >
| >
| >
| > D. Barton Johnson
| > NABOKV-L
| >
| >
Margarit Tadevosyan
English Department
Boston College
Carney Hall 237
(617) 552-2725
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L
I am not defending Dale Peck or his opinion (whether it is well informed or
not). I am simply objecting to the concept of a canon as a defined, neatly
fenced and protected body of literature - I personally prefer to think of
it as more fluid. I find George Shimanovich's charming typo ("cannon"
instead of "canon") strangely appropriate to this discussion as our defense
of an "established canon" takes on almost militaristic form.
I equally object to your definition of any book as "literature: nothing
more, nothing less." In my humble opinion, viewing art only for art's sake
can become dangerously miopic; moreover, it smacks of Peck's own
application of the adjective "sterile" to literature. However, this IS
only my humble opinion - not a defense of Peck or an attack on VN.
Best of luck
Margarit
| On Wed, 30 Jun 2004 10:29:02 -0700
| "D. Barton Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu> wrote:
| ------------------
| Oh my. It seems that every time I take a swipe at the venerable Peck,
some | representative of the class that Whitaker Chambers once called
"the good | people, the nice people," rushes in and tries to make some
kind of case for | the persecuted fellow. Ms. Tadevosyan's "didactic"
post compels me to | amplify a few of my points.
|
| "What the hell," she says, "let's pelt Peck with stones...or at least
have | him forever banished from the land of critical literature for not
providing | with substantial evidence with quotes and references to
quantifiably justify | his claim that VN's works...should not be taught
in their entirety." For | those of you coming in late, please note that
Ms. Tadevosyan is being IRONIC | here. She DOES NOT believe that Mr.
Peck's refusal to actually make his case | should prevent any of us from
taking his case seriously. I don't know about | you, but when someone
tells me that, all visible evidence to the contrary, | the sky is green,
I'd really appreciate that person providing just a little | backup. And I
have to reiterate: with regard to Nabokov-with regard to | almost
anyone-Peck does not make his case. In VN's case, he merely sneers at |
the "sterile invantions of late Nabokov" and calls for the removal of half
| his oeuvre from the canon. Authors that Peck does spend more time with
| (because you see, unlike Ms. Tadevosyan, I have had the misfortune of
| reading a great deal of Mr. Peck's "literary criticism") don't get off
| nearly so easily. For instance, in the case of the contemporary novelist
| David Foster Wallace, Peck speculates that said author's work could be
| improved if he submitted to a vigorous bout of anal sex. No, he's not
| kidding, and yeah, he puts this suggestion in somewhat more vivid terms
than | certain members of this forum might appreciate. But this is the
kind of | mindset that Ms. Tadevosyan insists we must take seriously for
no other | reason than (....now scanning Ms. Tadevosyan's post to see if
she comes up | with any actual reason...), well, I guess, than the fact
that she's | enlisting him in support of the idea that it might be good
for "some of the | giants" to "move aside and make room for others"?
That's not scholarship, | it's not criticism-it's whining. Which Peck
himself is an expert at-here's a | quote to quantifiably justify my
claim, taken from Peck's review of Rick | Moody's (admittedly awful) The
Black Veil:
|
| "I can think of no more urgent reason to write books today than out of
an | overwhelming sense of despair at the state of the world. It is also
the most | urgent reason to write book reviews. When I wrote my last
review for this | magazine, anthrax was traveling through the U.S. Postal
Service and smart | bombs were decimating Afghanistan; now we are waiting
to find out if | Pakistan and India are going to fight the first tactical
nuclear war. Global | warming, overpopulation, the worldwide AIDS
epidemic, the ever-increasing | distance between supposedly democratic
governments and their electorates, | the decimation of culture after
culture by the relentless spread of the | Disneyfied garbage of the
American entertainment complex, and the incredibly | sad, horrible,
hopelessness-inducing fact that people still cannot say what | they
really mean to each other after seven or so millennia of human |
civilization: life really sucks right now."
|
| Poor baby. And so articulate, too.
|
| Peck is not a "snarling nonentity" because he doesn't share "our"
passion | for VN (although if I were to address Ms. Tadevosyan directly,
I might be | compelled to say something along the lines of "What do you
mean WE.."); Peck | is a "snarling nonentity" because he is.(Hey, I just
said what I meant!!!!) |
| Oh, and incidentally, teaching Lolita in a sexuality course is an
abominable | idea. The book is literature: nothing more, nothing less.
|
| GK
|
|
| >
| >
| >
| > ---------- Forwarded Message ----------
| > Date: Tuesday, June 29, 2004 5:57 PM -0400
| > From: Margarit Tadevosyan <tadevosy@bc.edu>
| > To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>,
| > NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
| > Subject: Re: Fw: Dale Peck---drop half of Faulkner and Nabokov from
the | > canon . COMMENT
| >
| > ------------------ How wonderful to see that the Nabokov community has
| > stood up shoulder to shoulder in a patriotic defense against partial
| > decanonization of VN's works! What the hell, let's pelt Peck with
stones, | > let's assume that he is not even literate enough to read
books (unlike us, | > of course), let alone understand them, before
writing his worthless | > reviews. Or at least have him forever banished
from the land of critical | > literature for not providing substantial
evidence with quotes and | > references to quantifiably justify his claim
that VN's works (along with | > other, rather worthy writers, whose
decanonization has interestingly not | > outraged any of us, lovers of
literature) should not be taught in their | > entirety. Or could we
perhaps (oh, what outrage!) simply take this | > opportunity to question
the process of canonization and wonder for a | > second
| > how and why writers become canonized? How many wonderful books have
fallen | > off the academic pages because of their inconvenient length or
some unfor! | > tunate circumstance! How many books would have never
become so popular | > had it not been for some sort of scandalous
attention they received (think | > Madame Bovary, think Ulysses, and
perhaps even Lolita!). Had it not been | > for the fatwa, would ANY
non-specialized literature course ever teach | > Salman Rushdie? Why is
it that we celebrate Joyce as one of the largest | > figures of high
modernism but tend to ignore, for the most part, Gertrude | > Stein? Why
does a class on sexuality necessarilty include Lolita (not | > that
| > I wouldn't pick it if I were teaching a class with that title) but
never | > Djuna Bharnes? Why are we so quick and so vicious in our
judgment of Peck? | > Simply because he wants to open up space for other,
less noticed and who | > knows, perhaps less worthy writers? On the
other hand, how will we ever | > know if they are worthy or not if they
never get any space or attention? | > Why are we so eager to call Peck a
"snarling nonenntity" simply because he | > doesn't want to share our
pass! ion for VN's works?
| >
| > I would hate to give off the wrong impression here or undermine my own
| > interest in VN's works. We read, study, and teach literature not ONLY
| > based on our VERY subjective personal preferences. After all, we are
a | > community of people who study the humanities, where open opinions
and | > critical suggestions matter so much more than quantitative or even
| > qualitative analysis! If we have agreed to vote off writers who are
not | > firmly on our list of most favorites and the people who do not
share our | > opinions, if instead of thinking about literature as a
body, as a history, | > as a system of some sort we indulge in idolatry
of individual authors that | > allows no space for "dissidents", have we
created an intellectual tyranny | > that I think VN condemned in his
writing?
| >
| > I am half reluctant to post this message because of its didactic (very
| > foreign to me) tone, but I want to share my opinion with others for a
| > reason. Last semester I was teaching a course on the self-conscious
| > novel,
| > and after making a preliminary list of assigned texts, I realized
that it | > was an exclusively white male modernist novel course (Joyce,
Beckett, | > Faulkner, Nabokov, Bulgakov, etc.). Now perhaps because I
am the child of | > the politically correct era, I wondered if modernism
was really limited to | > this.... Of course, the truth is that it's
not. Now do we REALLY want to | > cover Peck in mud for suggesting that
some of the giants should move aside | > and make room for others?
| >
| > Thank you
| > Margarit
| > | On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 11:10:37 -0700
| > | "D. Barton Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu> wrote:
| > | ---------- Forwarded Message ----------
| > | Date: Tuesday, June 29, 2004 9:26 AM -0400
| > | From: George Shimanovich <gshiman@optonline.net>
| > | To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
| > | Subject: Re: Fw: Dale Peck---drop half of Faulkner and Nabokov
from | > the
| > ca | non (fwd)
| > |
| > | ------------------
| > | > Explain to me again why we're still spending time on this
snarling | > | > nonentity?
| > |
| > | Because for some Peck is mandatory part of diversity of Nabokov's
| > studies. | Until that kind of diversity is agreed to be wrong for
this | > list Becks will | be showing up.
| > | Or our Editir can qualify such unworthy material: Read Only, i.e.
read | > but | do not comment.
| > | Or you can press Del as I always do.
| > |
| > | George Shimanovich
| > |
| > | > ---------- Forwarded Message ----------
| > | > Date: Monday, June 28, 2004 8:31 PM -0400
| > | > From: "Kenny, Glenn" <gkenny@hfmus.com>
| > | > To: 'Vladimir Nabokov Forum' <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
| > | > Subject: RE: Fw: Dale Peck---drop half of Faulkner and Nabokov
from | > the ca | > non
| > | >
| > | > ------------------ Before getting too deep into which half of
| > Nabokov's | > oeuvre Dale Peck would like to see removed from the
canon, | > we should | > reflect that perhaps even he couldn't really
tell us. His | > lack of | citation,
| > | > which has been discussed here before, camoflauges what could be
a | > | multitude
| > | > of sins. Oh, to hell with it, I'll just come out and say it: I
truly | > doubt | > that Peck has read, let alone digested, the
entireity of VN's | > literary | > output. I rather doubt he's read
everything VN wrote in | > English. Until | > persuaded otherwise, in
fact, I should insist that | > Mr.
| > Peck has read very | > little VN and even less worthwhile
commentary on | > VN.
| > | >
| > | > Explain to me again why we're still spending time on this
snarling | > | > nonentity?
| > | >
| > | > GK
| > | >
| > | > > ----------
| > | > > From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum on behalf of D. Barton
| > Johnson
| > | > > Reply To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
| > | > > Sent: Monday, June 28, 2004 8:17 PM
| > | > > To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
| > | > > Subject: Fw: Fw: Dale Peck---drop half of Faulkner and
| > Nabokov
| > from | > > the canon
| > | > >
| > | > >
| > | > > ----- Original Message -----
| > | > > From: Debby Coley
| > | > > To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
| > | > > Sent: Monday, June 28, 2004 1:40 PM
| > | > > Subject: Re: Fw: Dale Peck---drop half of Faulkner and Nabokov
| > from
| > the | > > canon
| > | > >
| > | > > I am a graduate student majoring in English, and in the
upcoming | > fall | > > semester, I am taking one class titled,
Sexuality and | > Literature, in | which
| > | > > we will read Lolita. I am also taking a class focusing on
works | > by
| > | Joyce,
| > | > > Woolf, and Thomas.
| > | > > deborah coley
| > | > >
| > | > > "D. Barton Johnson" < chtodel@cox.net> wrote:
| > | > >
| > | > >
| > | > >
| > | > > ----- Original Message -----
| > | > > From: Rodney Welch
| > | > > To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
| > | > > Sent: Monday, June 28, 2004 10:11 AM
| > | > > Subject: Re: Dale Peck---drop half of Faulkner and
Nabokov | > from | the
| > | > > canon
| > | > >
| > | > > Message requiring your approval (94 lines)
| > ------------------
| > | > > I guess the question is: what is "canonical" where
Nabokov | > is
| > | > > concerned, and which half is Peck referring to? The general
| > consensus | > > among those of us here, I'm guessing, would be that
| > Nabokov's | masterpieces
| > | > > are The Defense, Invitation to a Beheading, The Gift, Speak,
| > Memory,
| > | Pnin,
| > | > > Lolita, Pale Fire, Ada, and maybe a select group of the
stories. | > Harold | > > Bloom selected only Lolita and Pale Fire for
his Western | > Canon; Nabokov | > > himself said (if I recall
correctly) that he'd only | > be remembered for | > > Lolita and his
translation of Eugene Onegin. | > Where does Nabokov | generally
| > | > > stand in academia nowadays -- has he been crowded out by all
the | > | > > Fulmerfords?
| > | > >
| > | > > Rodney Welch
| > | > > Columbia, SC
| > | > > -----------------------------------------------------
| > | > > EDNOTE. I suppose it depends on which academiac you
ask. In | > my | > > highly prejudiced take he is up there with Joyce.
| > | > >
| > | > >
| > | > >
| > | > >
| > | > > _____
| > | > >
| > | > > Do you Yahoo!?
| > | > > Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
| > | > >
| > | >
| > | > ---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
| > | >
| > | >
| > | >
| > | > D. Barton Johnson
| > | > NABOKV-L
| > |
| > |
| > | ---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
| > |
| > |
| > |
| > | D. Barton Johnson
| > | NABOKV-L
| >
| > Margarit Tadevosyan
| > English Department
| > Boston College
| > Carney Hall 237
| > (617) 552-2725
| >
| > ---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
| >
| >
| >
| > D. Barton Johnson
| > NABOKV-L
| >
| > ---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
| >
| >
| >
| > D. Barton Johnson
| > NABOKV-L
| >
| >
Margarit Tadevosyan
English Department
Boston College
Carney Hall 237
(617) 552-2725
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L