Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0008950, Fri, 21 Nov 2003 16:16:26 -0800

Subject
Fw: Fw: Saul Bellow -- an earnest admirer of Pnin and Lolita ...:
Martin Amis essay
Date
Body
EDNOTE. I confess I am not a great admirer of Bellow but then literature,
even "good" literature, can take many varied forms. I did enjoy his "Delmore
Schwartz" book.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Bennett" <mab@straussandasher.com>
>
> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (74
lines) ------------------
> I completely agree with Rodney. I just don't get the infatuation with
> Bellow that Amis, Hitchens, Rushdie, and these other (former) bright young
> things have. I don't hear many Americans currently proclaiming Bellow the
> "Supreme American Novelist," and I seriously doubt that he will achieve
such
> an apotheosis after his death. V.S. Pritchett published a review of
> Bellows' work years ago, in the New Statesman, I believe, which, if I
recall
> it accurately, captured Bellow's virtues and defects quite well. As I
> recall, Pritchett thought very highly of Bellows' early short novels,
e.g.,
> "Dangling Man" and "The Victim," but thought "the jumbos," such as
"Augie,"
> "Henderson," "Herzog," "Sammler," and "Humboldt," to be sprawling messes
> that were not redeemed by the author's exuberance and philosophical
> pretensions. In other words, he thought Bellow a talented writer of short
> fiction who fell prey to bad case of Great American Novelitis. In the
long
> run, I believe Sir Victor's opinion will prevail.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: D. Barton Johnson [mailto:chtodel@cox.net]
> Sent: Friday, November 21, 2003 8:43 AM
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> Subject: Fw: Fw: Saul Bellow -- an earnest admirer of Pnin and Lolita ...:
> Martin Amis essay
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Rodney Welch" <rodney41@mindspring.com>
>
> > ----------------- Message requiring your approval (48
> lines) ------------------
> > In his memoir "Experience," Amis calls Nabokov and Bellow his "twin
> > peaks." He goes on to write: "Nabokov, ridiculously, once dismissed
> > Bellow as `a miserable mediocrity', an evaluation based (I am
> > confident) on slender acquaintance with his stuff..." I'm less
> > confident; the work of Bellow that Amis (and Christopher Hitchens and
> > James Wood and Salman Rushdie) nominates for the great American novel
> > is "The Adventures of Augie March," which strikes me as the work of a
> > complete windbag. I am not at all convinced by the many arguments put
> > forth in its behalf in recent weeks that it is some kind of Joycean
> > masterpiece of language or the American idiom or what-have-you; I read
> > it quite carefully a few years ago and it was clear to me throughout
> > that not only is it not great, it isn't very good either. It's a
> > rambling self-absorbed picaresque, penned by a young man under the
> > spell of his own unlovable and unlovely voice -- which, as subsequent
> > novels indicate, he was neither able nor -- by most critics --
> > encouraged to shake. I don't get my opinions from Nabokov or base them
> > on what he might have thought, but I cannot imagine that he would have
> > found anything to like in Bellow's clotted prose.
> >
> > Rodney Welch
> > Columbia, SC
> >
> >
> > On Thursday, November 20, 2003, at 09:27 PM, D. Barton Johnson wrote:
> >
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: <nitrogen14@australia.edu>
> > >>
> > >> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (11
> > > lines) ------------------
> > >> "Still, I propose to make an educated guess about >literary
> > >> futures, and I hereby trumpet the prediction that Saul Bellow >will
> > >> emerge as the supreme
> > >> American novelist."
> > >>
> > >> I can recall when Amis fils was predicting World War 3, and his own
> > >> 'need' during WW3, to shoot his wife and children to spare them the
> > >> ravages of
> > >> radiation poisoning. I suspect his latest prediction has an equally
> > >> good
> > >> chance of being realised.
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >
> >
>