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VN Bibliography: Review of: Boyd's PALE FIRE
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The London Times Literary Supplement of Mar 10th (#5058)has two VN items of note:
1. Claude Rawson's review of Jonathan Swift's correspondence mentions en passant _Tale of a Tub_, Swift's attack on the "moderns" and in defense of the "classical" tradition. In his discussion Rawson remarks:
"It observed the harmless garrulity of a Dryden and reimagined them as a monster of egomania in the manner of _Advertisements for Myself_. But the basic energy with which in his somewhat neurasthenic apprehension of the future course of modernism, he reviled that self-indulgence, also produced one of the very best works in the rejected mode, bringing out its potential with an energy and inventiveness which were the source of major achievements in others. Without it, _Tristam Shandy_, _Finnegans Wake_, _Watt_, and _Pale Fire_ would not exist in their present form, works which are simultaneously an extension of Swift's parody and an unparodying, witnessing to the inwardness of Swift's rapport with what he rejected." (3)
2. Catriona Kelly reviews Brian Boyd's _Nabokov's 'Pale Fire'"(pp. 25-26). Among her querulosities, she remarks that some readers may be put off by Boyd's "detailed citation of protocols from the Internet discussion group Nabokv-l (like dreaming , electronnic discussion is a good deal more interesting when participated in directly than when reported after the fact).
1. Claude Rawson's review of Jonathan Swift's correspondence mentions en passant _Tale of a Tub_, Swift's attack on the "moderns" and in defense of the "classical" tradition. In his discussion Rawson remarks:
"It observed the harmless garrulity of a Dryden and reimagined them as a monster of egomania in the manner of _Advertisements for Myself_. But the basic energy with which in his somewhat neurasthenic apprehension of the future course of modernism, he reviled that self-indulgence, also produced one of the very best works in the rejected mode, bringing out its potential with an energy and inventiveness which were the source of major achievements in others. Without it, _Tristam Shandy_, _Finnegans Wake_, _Watt_, and _Pale Fire_ would not exist in their present form, works which are simultaneously an extension of Swift's parody and an unparodying, witnessing to the inwardness of Swift's rapport with what he rejected." (3)
2. Catriona Kelly reviews Brian Boyd's _Nabokov's 'Pale Fire'"(pp. 25-26). Among her querulosities, she remarks that some readers may be put off by Boyd's "detailed citation of protocols from the Internet discussion group Nabokv-l (like dreaming , electronnic discussion is a good deal more interesting when participated in directly than when reported after the fact).