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Re: Teaching Lolita (fwd)
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From: Anna Riehl <ANYA17@prodigy.net>
Walter, Eric, everybody,
I appreciate your comments, as well as others that were sent to me off
the list. Next time around I just might order a plain edition of *Lo*,
exactly for the reason that Walter brings up. At some point, I was sorry
that I picked Appel's version, if only because I started to suspect that
most of the students would not appreciate the fine apparatus in this
edition. However, as some of you have suggested, Appel's intro as well as
annotations themselves provide for interesting discussions and
interpretations. I have adviced my students to forbear from reading the
notes at their first reading, with the exception of French bits that need
translation for most of them. It will be intersting to experiment and survey
to see how many of them skipped the annotations and what they lost / gained
by that.
As I said earlier, I have to face the enormous problem of dealing with
the novel as an object of the reading process rather than as an entity
consumed in in full and now under examination. I have faint hopes that some
of them will get ahead, but most will struggle with their 50 pages per two
days. No wonder the Kubrick starts with the murder scene; I feel like
repeating that; otherwise, we will not get to Quilty until the last day of
class...
Once again, I thank Eric Naiman, Elaine Norris, John Hamilton, and
Walter Miale for their comments and suggestions. I will be thrilled to get
more imput from everyone...
Warm regards,
Anya Riehl.
Walter, Eric, everybody,
I appreciate your comments, as well as others that were sent to me off
the list. Next time around I just might order a plain edition of *Lo*,
exactly for the reason that Walter brings up. At some point, I was sorry
that I picked Appel's version, if only because I started to suspect that
most of the students would not appreciate the fine apparatus in this
edition. However, as some of you have suggested, Appel's intro as well as
annotations themselves provide for interesting discussions and
interpretations. I have adviced my students to forbear from reading the
notes at their first reading, with the exception of French bits that need
translation for most of them. It will be intersting to experiment and survey
to see how many of them skipped the annotations and what they lost / gained
by that.
As I said earlier, I have to face the enormous problem of dealing with
the novel as an object of the reading process rather than as an entity
consumed in in full and now under examination. I have faint hopes that some
of them will get ahead, but most will struggle with their 50 pages per two
days. No wonder the Kubrick starts with the murder scene; I feel like
repeating that; otherwise, we will not get to Quilty until the last day of
class...
Once again, I thank Eric Naiman, Elaine Norris, John Hamilton, and
Walter Miale for their comments and suggestions. I will be thrilled to get
more imput from everyone...
Warm regards,
Anya Riehl.