Subject
Re: lolita and the 100 best novels ... (fwd)
Date
Body
Tim Henderson<thenders@mail.lanline.com> wrote:
Lo and behold, in the fine print of the NYT coverage of the Top 100, I
see that 'Lolita' and the other top 5 tied for first place in the
original voting. They were ordered by a second round of voting. Being
only a semi-informed observer, I'm going to risk bargin in anyway and
say I can't chafe too much at the selections considering that A. they
wanted media-star scholars whether or not their fame is related to taste
in literature and B. The "American Lit" types, who have a very different
way of judging merit than we do, are and probably must be heaviliy
represented. My apologies if you ARE 'American Lit types' out
there...I'm thinking of my own professors who drew big diagrams
representing Fitzgerald novels...like VN's Cheshire cat in the Cornell
lectures-- only they were quite serious..
Lo and behold, in the fine print of the NYT coverage of the Top 100, I
see that 'Lolita' and the other top 5 tied for first place in the
original voting. They were ordered by a second round of voting. Being
only a semi-informed observer, I'm going to risk bargin in anyway and
say I can't chafe too much at the selections considering that A. they
wanted media-star scholars whether or not their fame is related to taste
in literature and B. The "American Lit" types, who have a very different
way of judging merit than we do, are and probably must be heaviliy
represented. My apologies if you ARE 'American Lit types' out
there...I'm thinking of my own professors who drew big diagrams
representing Fitzgerald novels...like VN's Cheshire cat in the Cornell
lectures-- only they were quite serious..