Subject
Fw: linguistic showoffs
From
Date
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Kenny, Glenn" <gkenny@hfmus.com>
To: "'D. Barton Johnson '" <chtodel@cox.net>
Sent: Saturday, September 13, 2003 10:06 PM
Subject:
> I cannot come up with any such passage. But I bet David Morris really
likes
> Raymond Carver. I like the precision of his typing too.
> If anyone would like to steer this cretin my way, please do. It would be a
> great pleasure to li[n]guistically eviscerate him.
>
> GK
> gkenny@hfmus.com
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: D. Barton Johnson
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> Sent: 9/13/03 7:18 PM
> Subject: Fw: Linguistic showoffs
>
> EDNOTE. Nick Grundy poses an interesting question. Can anyone point out
> a case of VN linguistic virtuosisty that is that is "unmotivated"?
> I am, by the way, glad to hear some are finding the Pynchon list
> material of interest. Some aren't, I know. It is hard to follow at times
> (and, much as I would like to), I don't follow it closely for time
> reasons but a lot of interesting explication, especially in the form of
> possibly relevant cut and paste stuff. NABOKV-L might try something of
> the sort ere long. Reactions?
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Nick Grundy <mailto:nick@bsad.org>
> To: Nabokov-L <mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
> Sent: Saturday, September 13, 2003 1:54 PM
> Subject: Linguistic showoffs
>
> Just going through some of the pynchon-l crosspostings which built up
> while I was on holiday, and I came across this:
>
> >>"The main favor I ask of a serious critic is sufficient perceptiveness
> to
> >> understand that whatever term or trope I use, my purpose is not to be
> >> facetiously flashy or grotesquely obscure but to express what I feel
> and
> >> think with the utmost truthfulness and [precision]." --VN
>
> To which David Morris responded:
>
> > Like so many quotes from Nabokov, I find this one preposterous. VN is
> nothing
> > if not a liguistic [sic] show-off, especially in his later works.
>
> This attitude has always surprised me, not least because it rather
> implies a sort of inverse intellectual snobbery - someone showing off is
> by definition bloody good, after all. More to the point, though, it
> strikes me as the wrong reaction - one of the pleasures of reading VN
> has, for me, always been that it requires an effort. The example that
> leaps to mind is Humbert's "enormous molar, with an abscess as big as a
> maraschino cherry", where the incongruity of the simile forces the
> reader consciously to imagine it; it cannot be imagined without some
> effort.
>
> I appreciate I'm pretty certain to be preaching to the converted here,
> but it took me ages to get off the pynchon-l last time (although it is
> an excellent read, and their discussion of Pale Fire has been by turns
> absolutely fascinating and pleasantly combative), so I won't post this
> there. However, can anyone come up with a passage from VN which strikes
> them as *exclusively* linguistic showing-off?
>
> Nick.
>
From: "Kenny, Glenn" <gkenny@hfmus.com>
To: "'D. Barton Johnson '" <chtodel@cox.net>
Sent: Saturday, September 13, 2003 10:06 PM
Subject:
> I cannot come up with any such passage. But I bet David Morris really
likes
> Raymond Carver. I like the precision of his typing too.
> If anyone would like to steer this cretin my way, please do. It would be a
> great pleasure to li[n]guistically eviscerate him.
>
> GK
> gkenny@hfmus.com
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: D. Barton Johnson
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> Sent: 9/13/03 7:18 PM
> Subject: Fw: Linguistic showoffs
>
> EDNOTE. Nick Grundy poses an interesting question. Can anyone point out
> a case of VN linguistic virtuosisty that is that is "unmotivated"?
> I am, by the way, glad to hear some are finding the Pynchon list
> material of interest. Some aren't, I know. It is hard to follow at times
> (and, much as I would like to), I don't follow it closely for time
> reasons but a lot of interesting explication, especially in the form of
> possibly relevant cut and paste stuff. NABOKV-L might try something of
> the sort ere long. Reactions?
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Nick Grundy <mailto:nick@bsad.org>
> To: Nabokov-L <mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
> Sent: Saturday, September 13, 2003 1:54 PM
> Subject: Linguistic showoffs
>
> Just going through some of the pynchon-l crosspostings which built up
> while I was on holiday, and I came across this:
>
> >>"The main favor I ask of a serious critic is sufficient perceptiveness
> to
> >> understand that whatever term or trope I use, my purpose is not to be
> >> facetiously flashy or grotesquely obscure but to express what I feel
> and
> >> think with the utmost truthfulness and [precision]." --VN
>
> To which David Morris responded:
>
> > Like so many quotes from Nabokov, I find this one preposterous. VN is
> nothing
> > if not a liguistic [sic] show-off, especially in his later works.
>
> This attitude has always surprised me, not least because it rather
> implies a sort of inverse intellectual snobbery - someone showing off is
> by definition bloody good, after all. More to the point, though, it
> strikes me as the wrong reaction - one of the pleasures of reading VN
> has, for me, always been that it requires an effort. The example that
> leaps to mind is Humbert's "enormous molar, with an abscess as big as a
> maraschino cherry", where the incongruity of the simile forces the
> reader consciously to imagine it; it cannot be imagined without some
> effort.
>
> I appreciate I'm pretty certain to be preaching to the converted here,
> but it took me ages to get off the pynchon-l last time (although it is
> an excellent read, and their discussion of Pale Fire has been by turns
> absolutely fascinating and pleasantly combative), so I won't post this
> there. However, can anyone come up with a passage from VN which strikes
> them as *exclusively* linguistic showing-off?
>
> Nick.
>