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Re: Theory, American etc
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The reactions to my last couple of postings, as sent in by SK, AB, and JF,
have exceeded my expectations. They are --- how shall I put this? Decidedly
American.
It would be very much more persuasive if there were a Russian, British or
other European voice raised in support of VN’s American literary identity; but
it seems as though the basic question of whether there is such a thing as
this kind of identity in the first place has been solidly confirmed. Americans
are dead set on claiming VN for America, based on the 19 years he spent in
America, and disregarding the 60 years he spent elsewhere. Agreed, the 19 he
spent in America were his most rewarding in practical, physical terms. He had
every reason to be grateful and courteous to America, but this doesn’t make
him “an American”.
I’ll confine myself to a few good-natured, even-tempered remarks, refraining
from epithets such as “objectionable”, “offensive”, “violent”, “dismissive
”, and similar adjectival flings, which seem to me to lower the standards
of civilized debate.
AB wrote: Mencken ….. suited only to the time in which he had his
greatest success, the Twenties. …. mentioned disparagingly by two characters in
Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. …. something on a par with Jimmy Breslin of
the ‘60s. …. couldn’t have held his own for ten minutes …. with William
Safire …. Mencken …. was really a Rush Limbaugh.
Unfortunately, Breslin, Safire and Limbaugh mean even less to me than
Mencken, although I’ve heard of their names (at least I think I have). Were they
television pundits?
Just to do a little more homework, I put “literary criticism”, “literary
theory”, and the like into Google, and aside from some surprise at the plethora
of sites dealing with literary theory, the whole question of which is
clearly in a state of turbulent turmoil at present, I did note that the name of
Mencken seemed to come up with great regularity. Eg, here:
_http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/lit-crit.html_
(http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/lit-crit.html) and here:
_http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E01EFDA1E39F936A35757C0A96794
8260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1_
(http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E01EFDA1E39F936A35757C0A967948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1)
Pale Fire is mentioned on page 2; and Mencken on page 4 of the second site.
AB’s: Sandburg, too, is very much trapped in his time ….. No one reads him
today except scholars who for some reason have been forced to, contrasts
agreeably with JF’s mention of Sandburg's other poem known to every American who
took college-prep English, "Fog". Perhaps these college-prep Americans were
the scholars forced to read him. It seems to me that Sandburg is still
around, and will be for some time to come. I confess I do also like Sandburg’s “
Chicago”.
SK wrote: I heavily recommend you to read Susan Elizabeth Sweeney’s essay “
How Nabokov rewrote America” in The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov.
Following earlier urgings, I actually ordered this book on 30 December, but it still
hasn’t arrived. I expect it in the next day or two. I’m impressed by the
eagerness with which list members make recommendations, not forgetting Brian
Boyd’s suggestion that: you might try broadening your tastes. I do have a
personal library of about 10,000 volumes, but no librarian, and they’re in a state
of chassis at present, so I won’t make any reciprocal recommendations.
Besides which, most of the books deal with topics largely irrelevant to this
discussion. Perhaps, though, I could mildly suggest starting with a look at
Aristotle’s definition of democracy, not as the best, but as the least bad form of
government.
I will admit to having read snippets of Emily Dickinson and Edna St Vincent
Millay; several stories by Ring Lardner; as well as most, virtually all, of
Ambrose Bierce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Mark Twain (I use the amusing
moniker he chose for himself and under which he is published and best known). All
of these I greatly enjoyed. I mentioned Bierce in an earlier posting: “many
American authors (Bierce comes to mind), spent time in England and Europe,
some of them for quite long and formative periods, but they remain essentially
American.” Twain’s hilarious essay “The Awful German Language” repeatedly
amuses me in connection with translation, and especially the complete
impossibility of “literal” translation.
AB also wrote: I don’t see Joyce and Beckett putting their heads together
and conniving to concoct a “calculatedly” “difficult” idiom for any reason
other than for art. I couldn’t agree more wholeheartedly with this comment. SK
identified the person who made this strange remark: The British critic I
mentioned was John Carey. If this is the same Carey who wrote on Marvell, I’ll
say I've found him interesting, if perhaps a little facile. Wasn’t he Iris
Murdoch’s husband?
Carey wasn’t the critic I had in mind who attacked academic literary
gobbledy-gook. That was someone else, who wrote an article on the subject not long
ago, I believe in the New York Times. I think his name does begin with C, but
I still can’t remember it.
JF wrote:
I'd be very interested in comments on whether Nabokov was technically an
aristocrat or "from an aristocratic family", as I got into an argument elsewhere
about the latter phrase.
Subject to correction from the better-informed, I’d say the Nabokovs were
definitely not aristocrats within the precise European (and non-British)
application of the term. But I haven’t perused the Almanac in this connection.
JF: Pound, when you linked his prolixity with Whitman's I assume you were
talking about the Pound of the Cantos. Yes, that is what I was thinking of.
JF: I can't think of a British equivalent to Whitman's and sometimes
Sandburg's esthetic of "Don't stop when you're on a roll." Well, I did suggest that
Blake’s prophetic books perhaps provide striking examples of a Britisher on
an extended roll of that kind, but that sort of thing seems to me to have
become extinct among the C20th British, and I can’t imagine it in any other
European languages. No doubt I’m wrong.
Perhaps it’s worth repeating that I insist on nothing, but hope to be
rational, even-tempered and good-natured in any discussion. I must now make a
mighty resolve to shut up for a while.
Charles
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