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Fw: Fw: NY Times Review: Nabokov's Butterflies
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Wayne Daniels" <wdaniels@tpl.toronto.on.ca>
>
> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (8
lines) -------------------
> >''Nabokov's Butterflies'' juxtaposes science and art, but cannot
integrate
> them.
>
> An interesting claim. I have the impression that outside the
English-speaking world the rift between science and art is not so profound,
so the reviewer may well be missing something. But can scientific prose
really serve any other goal than transparency? I speak as a former
copyeditor of academic, mainly scientific journals ― not the worst of
qualifications, perhaps. One scientific paper resembles another to a
striking degree, mainly because of the conventions with which authors
comply, and which are meant to restrain expressive idiosyncracy (or plain
ineptitude) in the interests of clarity. There is little or no trace of
authorial "voice", and that is by design. Order and precision are obviously
shared goals among scientists, and no one could display more of either than
N., but they are present (in his fiction at any rate) in a manner quite
inseparable from his superbly achieved and wholly individual expression.
This is something, I suspect, to which scientific writers cannot rise ―
assuming they had any interest in so doing.The discipline of scientific
thinking, considered on its own, may confer benefits that indirectly shape
literature, but the extent to which a simple juxtaposition can shed much
light on their interaction is far from clear, at least to me.
>
> Best,
> Wayne Daniels
>
From: "Wayne Daniels" <wdaniels@tpl.toronto.on.ca>
>
> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (8
lines) -------------------
> >''Nabokov's Butterflies'' juxtaposes science and art, but cannot
integrate
> them.
>
> An interesting claim. I have the impression that outside the
English-speaking world the rift between science and art is not so profound,
so the reviewer may well be missing something. But can scientific prose
really serve any other goal than transparency? I speak as a former
copyeditor of academic, mainly scientific journals ― not the worst of
qualifications, perhaps. One scientific paper resembles another to a
striking degree, mainly because of the conventions with which authors
comply, and which are meant to restrain expressive idiosyncracy (or plain
ineptitude) in the interests of clarity. There is little or no trace of
authorial "voice", and that is by design. Order and precision are obviously
shared goals among scientists, and no one could display more of either than
N., but they are present (in his fiction at any rate) in a manner quite
inseparable from his superbly achieved and wholly individual expression.
This is something, I suspect, to which scientific writers cannot rise ―
assuming they had any interest in so doing.The discipline of scientific
thinking, considered on its own, may confer benefits that indirectly shape
literature, but the extent to which a simple juxtaposition can shed much
light on their interaction is far from clear, at least to me.
>
> Best,
> Wayne Daniels
>