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Re: Vn Bibliography: John DeMoss "The ³Real²Real Life : Sebastian Knight and the Critics "
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I'm baffled by John DeMoss' article. When was it written? The e-mail did not
contain any information about the source or the author. Am I right in
guessing that the article is at least 20 years old and was never published
in print?
In his opening paragraph, John DeMoss ridicules the whole critical
literature on Sebastian Knight as "shoddy", "faulty" and "riddled with
misreadings" but he only references a handful of outdated articles from the
1960s and 70s. I hope that this diatribe predates the excellent essays on
Sebastian Knight by Michael Begnal, Brian Boyd, Julian Connolly, John
Lanchester, Michael Maar, Jonathan Sisson, Michael Wood and other authors
because they certainly don't deserve to be condemned as "shoddy
scholarship".
DeMoss' claim to give "a more consistent and thorough solution to the puzzle
than has been put forward up to this point" further indicates that this
article dates from the early 1980s because some of its findings (at least
the more convincing ones) have already been discussed at length in more
recent essays.
Can anyone, the list editor or perhaps John DeMoss himself, confirm my
guess?
Jan Stottmeister
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu,chtodel@cox.net
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
contain any information about the source or the author. Am I right in
guessing that the article is at least 20 years old and was never published
in print?
In his opening paragraph, John DeMoss ridicules the whole critical
literature on Sebastian Knight as "shoddy", "faulty" and "riddled with
misreadings" but he only references a handful of outdated articles from the
1960s and 70s. I hope that this diatribe predates the excellent essays on
Sebastian Knight by Michael Begnal, Brian Boyd, Julian Connolly, John
Lanchester, Michael Maar, Jonathan Sisson, Michael Wood and other authors
because they certainly don't deserve to be condemned as "shoddy
scholarship".
DeMoss' claim to give "a more consistent and thorough solution to the puzzle
than has been put forward up to this point" further indicates that this
article dates from the early 1980s because some of its findings (at least
the more convincing ones) have already been discussed at length in more
recent essays.
Can anyone, the list editor or perhaps John DeMoss himself, confirm my
guess?
Jan Stottmeister
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu,chtodel@cox.net
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm