Subject
Wall Street Journal review of End of Alice (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Alexander Justice <jahvah@empirenet.com>
by James Wolcott of the New Yorker. The two most pertinent paragraphs
follow:
--------------
Ms. Homes [author of _The End of Alice_] has told interviewers that the
union between Humbert and his nymphet was the starting point for _The End
of Alice_ -- that she wanted to emphasize what Nabokov left implicit.
Even if we grant Ms. Homes the right to update _Lolita_ for the grunge era,
her effort hits a couple of snags. The first is that the flight of
Humbert and Lolita across motel America gave Nabokov's orginal novel an
open-air, wide-screen vista. Humbert's vainglorious blather couldn't
smother its oxygen intake. In contrast, _The End of Alice_ is trapped
inside a one-track mind that is stuck inside a prison cell, which is like
being shut behind two sets of walls. The narrator's memories and X-rated
projections are no substitute for real mobility.
Second snag: By appropriating _Lolita_ for her own purposes, Ms. Homes is
trying to doodle graffiti across the work of a master. When T. S. Eliot
parodied Pope in the first draft of _The Waste Land_, Ezra Pound told him
bluntly that he shouldn't parody Pope unless he could write better verse
than Pope -- _and you can't._ Ms. Homes can't write better prose than
Nabokov.
--------------
The rest of the review goes on to argue in support of the last sentence.
Listmembers might well guess that neither book nor author get cut any
slack by a reviewer who later uses the terms _non-art_ and _this rotten
novel_. I have no opinion whatsoever about The End of Alice, so please
don't take up Mr. Wolcott's statements or confuse them with me; I'm just
reporting a minor blip on the VVN radar.
Alexander Justice * jahvah@empirenet.com * Nigelville, California, USA
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. - H. L. Mencken
by James Wolcott of the New Yorker. The two most pertinent paragraphs
follow:
--------------
Ms. Homes [author of _The End of Alice_] has told interviewers that the
union between Humbert and his nymphet was the starting point for _The End
of Alice_ -- that she wanted to emphasize what Nabokov left implicit.
Even if we grant Ms. Homes the right to update _Lolita_ for the grunge era,
her effort hits a couple of snags. The first is that the flight of
Humbert and Lolita across motel America gave Nabokov's orginal novel an
open-air, wide-screen vista. Humbert's vainglorious blather couldn't
smother its oxygen intake. In contrast, _The End of Alice_ is trapped
inside a one-track mind that is stuck inside a prison cell, which is like
being shut behind two sets of walls. The narrator's memories and X-rated
projections are no substitute for real mobility.
Second snag: By appropriating _Lolita_ for her own purposes, Ms. Homes is
trying to doodle graffiti across the work of a master. When T. S. Eliot
parodied Pope in the first draft of _The Waste Land_, Ezra Pound told him
bluntly that he shouldn't parody Pope unless he could write better verse
than Pope -- _and you can't._ Ms. Homes can't write better prose than
Nabokov.
--------------
The rest of the review goes on to argue in support of the last sentence.
Listmembers might well guess that neither book nor author get cut any
slack by a reviewer who later uses the terms _non-art_ and _this rotten
novel_. I have no opinion whatsoever about The End of Alice, so please
don't take up Mr. Wolcott's statements or confuse them with me; I'm just
reporting a minor blip on the VVN radar.
Alexander Justice * jahvah@empirenet.com * Nigelville, California, USA
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. - H. L. Mencken