Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 00:59:33 -0500
> From: Mondegreen <gwf@greenworldcenter.org>
> Subject: Pynchon-l and Nabokv-l lists
>
> "I come not to bother, but to annoy."
> Jesus, in The Gospel According to Saint Eureen
>
> The digests of the Pynchon-l list are being posted on the Nabokov-l list
> for the duration of the Pale Fire discussion, and this intersection of the
> lists prompts a comparison.
>
> The Nabokov list must have a higher ratio of professionals to amateurs,
> there no doubt being more Nabokov professionals than Pynchon
professionals,
> and so it has more queries and responses of a technical scholarly nature.
> It also naturally has an international makeup and cosmopolitan flavor.
>
> The Nabokov list is moderated, co-moderated actually, by two
professionals,
> i.e. professors of literature, who have Nabokov's writings as a specialty.
> They're critics. Good ones.
>
> The Nabokov forum has a dress code. Being moderated, it has no flames,
> which is refreshing. (What are all they all about??) But the Nabokov list
> also lacks free-ranging discussion, and the ambience is therefore more
> impersonal and uh stiff. No horsing around. No getting to know each other
> as people over a beer at the end of the day. The professionals are (I
think
> this is fair, yes?) wary and, speaking for myself at least, so therefore
> are the amateurs. Subscribing is not like sitting around in the
> neighborhood pub or cafИ, but attending or participating in an academic
> forum.
>
> A significant shortcoming, in my view, of the requirement to keep posts
> sqarely on-topic is the result that the Nabokov forum cannot function as a
> civic space. In these parlous times, with intelligent civic discussion
> systematically excluded from the mass media, and, let's face it, with Big
> Brother already here, in my opinion we should be using any and every
> opportunity to nurture and enliven our civic life.
>
> The civic role of author and critic was an issue of some interest to
> Vladimir Nabokov who --and please correct me if I am wrong, someone--
> however seemed to lack a sense of how citizens, acting in concert, can
> bring their humane convictions to bear on the state, or work for the
common
> good. (No doubt Nabokov's limited civic-mindedness was due in part to the
> calamitous result of the Russian revolution.) Still, political themes were
> central to some of Nabokov's novels. The exclusion of "political" posts by
> one of the narrators of the Nabokov list, who even declined to post an
> essay by his co-moderator on Nabokov and Politics, may be in keeping with
> Nabokov's own inclinations toward avoidance of "politics", but the result
> is to exclude an area of significance to Nabokov studies and, more
> seriously, to keep the list and its discussion disjuncted, in a way, from
> the real world.
>
> Anyway, to summarize: over there, where the average age of the posters is
> no doubt older than it is here, the ground rules favor more dignity but
> less fun. AFAIAC both is better.
>
> Mondegreen
> "Gladly, the cross-eyed bear..."
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of pynchon-l-digest V2 #3385